Russia’s VTB Capital has sued Mozambique to recover its share of defaulted debts at the heart of the impoverished African nation’s $2bn “tuna bond” scandal, the Financial Times reported. State-owned VTB is demanding repayment of a $535m loan, according to a lawsuit that it filed against the Mozambican government in London. In 2013 and 2014 Mozambique borrowed $1.4bn from VTB and Credit Suisse tied to maritime security projects, alongside a $850m bond it sold to investors for the financing of a tuna-fishing fleet.

The two-year recession in Germany’s industrial heartlands is deepening, according to new data showing that orders in the country’s core manufacturing sector fell by more than expected in November — defying expectations of a rebound, the Financial Times reported. New German manufacturing orders fell by 1.3 per cent in November compared with the previous month, according to provisional figures published by the Federal Statistics Office on Wednesday. Economists polled by Reuters had expected an increase of 0.2 per cent.

Eurozone governments are on course to raise less cash from bond investors in 2020 than any year since the financial crisis, even as the European Central Bank hoovers up fresh supply and borrowing costs hover near record lows, the Financial Times reported. Analysts at JPMorgan estimate that net supply of euro-area sovereign bonds this year will come to €188bn, the lowest since 2008. That figure, based on issuance plans published by national debt agencies, is derived from €762bn of bond sales over the year, while €574bn of existing bonds mature.

A rescue deal for British Steel has edged closer after bidder Jingye received support from regional authorities in China to push through the takeover of the ailing UK steelmaker, the Financial Times reported. The 5,000 workers at the stricken company have been facing an uncertain future after it collapsed into liquidation in May when its owner, the buyout group Greybull Capital, failed to obtain an emergency loan from the UK government. An attempt to sell the group to Ataer Holding, an investment arm of Turkey’s military pension fund, fell through after 10 weeks of exclusive talks.

T5 Oil & Gas, an Africa-focused explorer founded by a group of Tullow Oil veterans, has warned there is a “material uncertainty” over its ability to stay in business for the next year if it fails to raise money to complete a key deal in Gabon after aborting a $45 million (€40.2 million) initial public offering (IPO) in 2018, The Irish Times reported. In spite of this, the UK-based company, led by Irishman Pat Plunkett, said in its 2018 report there was a “reasonable expectation” of carrying out an IPO or finding alternative funding in the first half of this year.

After almost a decade, the world’s lender of last resort is ready to leave Greece for good, Bloomberg News reported. For a while there, Europe’s most indebted nation had everyone worried this Mediterranean holiday destination was going to bring on the collapse of the euro. Its ups and downs had the market gyrating. Then came the biggest bailout in global financial history. The International Monetary Fund led the effort to save Greece from itself. At the beginning of the 10-year crisis in Greece, the Washington-based institution had asked for a restructuring of country’s debt.

The global economy is heading towards a “liquidity trap” that would undermine central banks’ efforts to avoid a future recession, according to Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, the Financial Times reported. In a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times, the outgoing governor warned that central banks were running out of the ammunition needed to combat a downturn. A liquidity trap occurs on the rare occasions when monetary policy loses all effectiveness to manage economic swings and looser policy does not encourage any additional spending.

Russian state lender VTB has filed a lawsuit in Britain’s High Court against a Mozambican government company it lent hefty sums to as part of a project now at the center of a $2 billion debt scandal, according to an online court filing, Reuters reported. The filing, dated Dec. 23, names as defendants the Mozambique state and Mozambique Asset Management, which took a $535 million loan from VTB as part of a costly project that U.S. authorities say was an elaborate front for a bribery and kickback scheme.

Business activity in the eurozone ticked up more than expected in December, boosted by a rise in the domestically-focused services sector that outweighed another slide in the manufacturing sector, according to a closely watched survey, the Financial Times reported. The economic outlook of companies in the eurozone also improved to its highest level since May, amid relief that the US-China trade war is easing and as the prospect of a sudden UK exit from the EU has faded.

Italian infrastructure group Atlantia on Friday suffered its second debt downgrade in a month, slipping further into junk territory, as the government considers revoking the group’s motorway concession following a deadly bridge collapse, Reuters reported. Controlled by Italy’s Benetton family and in charge of the country’s biggest motorway network, Atlantia SpA (ATL.MI) has been in the crosshairs since a concrete bridge operated by its Autostrade per l’Italia unit collapsed in the city of Genoa in August 2018, killing 43 people.