Billionaire Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct International Plc accused Debenhams Plc’s board of misleading shareholders in its Jan. 10 results ahead of the department-store chain’s profit warning last week, Bloomberg News reported.

British baby products retailer Mothercare said on Tuesday it plans to sell its educational toy brand ELC to Teal Brands for £13.5 million (€15.75 million) as it looks to cut debt, sending its shares up 6 per cent, The Irish Times reported. The company’s sales and profit have been hammered by intense competition from supermarket groups and online retailers in its main British market as well as by rising costs. In addition to the sale of Early Learning Centre Ltd (ELC), it will also sell some related assets, Mothercare said. It will, however, retain some ELC inventory to sell later.

Seán Quinn’s five adult children unknowingly “put their heads in the noose” for a liability of more than €415 million – €83 million each – as a result of guarantees they signed concerning loans made by Anglo Irish Bank to Quinn companies, the High Court has been told, The Irish Times reported. Mr Quinn had gambled with his children’s property and future when companies in his group got €2.34 billion in loans from Anglo during 2007 and 2008 to fund margin calls on contracts for difference (CFD) positions held by Mr Quinn in the bank, Bernard Dunleavy SC said.

The High Court has granted summary judgment for €1.59 million against a daughter-in-law of well known developer Paddy Kelly over loans primarily related to the purchase of units in a commercial building in Sandyford, Dublin, The Irish Times reported. AIB sought judgment against Joanna Sloan, wife of Simon Kelly, son of Laois-born Paddy Kelly arising from loans advanced in 2007 for the purchase of units in Sandyford Apex Centre and for the release of equity in two of the units there.

Beleaguered rich-lister Eric Watson will likely remain embroiled in courts for years — and faces the possibility of a tax bill of $200m when penalties are added — after a landmark court decision yesterday saw his businesses ruled to have engaged in $51.5m in tax avoidance, The New Zealand Herald reported. Justice Matthew Palmer said a complex 2002 transaction — involving Cayman Island companies while Watson himself was relocating from New Zealand to the UK for tax purposes — was an avoidance arrangement. The case is one of the largest tax judgments in New Zealand history.

A sharp drop in German industrial production has added to fears that the country’s manufacturing slowdown has extended into 2019 and will weigh on the eurozone economy, the Financial Times reported. Industrial output fell 0.8 per cent in January, Germany’s statistics office said on Monday, in an indication of the threat to exports from weaker global demand and political uncertainty. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the data to show a rise of 0.5 per cent.

The UK Pensions Regulator has dropped its probe into whether Johnston Press used an insolvency process to dump £300m of pension liabilities into the industry-backed Pension Protection Fund, the Financial Times reported. The regulator opened an investigation in November after Johnston, the publisher of the Scotsman and Yorkshire Post, used a “pre-pack” insolvency to keep the business afloat. Pre-packs are legitimate procedures that allow a business to go into administration, with the assets then sold on to a new buyer, minus liabilities such as pension debt.

Outsourcing specialist Kier Group has revised its debt up by £50m after an accounting error, alarming investors and raising further concerns over the financial health of the industry, the Financial Times reported. Shares in the contractor, which employs 20,000 people on work ranging from rubbish collection for local authorities to building houses and schools, fell 13 per cent after it said it had revised its net debt as at December 31 up to £180.5m.

European officials sought to quell fears Greece is going off track just months after its bailout ended, talking up the country’s reform drive even though Athens has yet to fulfill the conditions attached to the disbursement of some 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in debt-relief aid, Bloomberg News reported. The decision to withhold the cash was taken at a meeting of euro-area finance ministers in Brussels on Monday, marking the delay of the first post-bailout payment the country is set to receive as part of a deal struck last year with its European creditors to ease its debt load.

As the battle between Mike Ashley and Debenhams Plc becomes ever more acrimonious, the department store chain is stepping up its efforts to see off the retail billionaire, a Bloomberg View reported. On Monday, it said it was close to securing about 150 million pounds ($194.9 million) of extra financing. This announcement follows last week’s severe profit warning. When you are fending off an activist investor or a potential predator – and Ashley is both, given that his Sports Direct International Plc has a 30 percent stake – it’s important to have some good news.