British department store retailer Debenhams said on Tuesday that while major store closures were an option, the company was not actively pursuing this route, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Shares in Debenhams slumped on Monday after news that the remit of adviser KPMG had been widened to include consideration of a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA), which allows retailers to avoid insolvency or administration by offloading unwanted stores and securing reduced rents on others.

Two of the most storied names in German department stores are combining in a deal orchestrated by an Austrian real estate billionaire, highlighting the pressures facing traditional retailers amid the rise of Amazon.com Inc. Karstadt, controlled by Rene Benko’s Signa Holding GmbH, agreed to take over Galeria Kaufhof, owned by Saks Fifth Avenue parent Hudson’s Bay Co., creating a retail company with 5.4 billion euros ($6.3 billion) in revenue, Bloomberg News reported. Benko has long wanted to merge the brands, having had an overture rejected as recently as February.

It is said that generals often plan to fight the last war. Ten years on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, many experts fear a new financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. In fact, the global financial system is much more robust than before 2008, but the global economy is still threatened by excessive debt. The financial crisis began because of dangerous features within the financial system itself. Massively leveraged investment banks engaged in socially useless trading of huge volumes of complex credit securities and derivatives.

ING‘s chief financial officer has resigned after being singled out as responsible for the compliance failings that allowed companies to launder hundreds of millions of euros and pay bribes. Koos Timmermans, a 22-year veteran of ING, is the most senior executive to leave the Dutch bank over the money laundering affair, for which it has agreed to pay a record €775m in penalties to the country’s public prosecutor, the Financial Times reported.

Britain’s biggest labour union on Monday called for a criminal investigation into key individuals involved in the collapse of construction and outsourcing company Carillion. Carillion, which provided services in defence, education, health and transport, collapsed in January, becoming the largest construction bankruptcy in British history, Reuters reported. It left creditors and the firm’s pensioners facing steep losses and put thousands of jobs at risk. The Unite union launched legal action against Carillion in July on behalf of workers who were made redundant.

Europe’s biggest debt collector says an increase in volumes in Sweden and Norway could be an early indication that households are starting to struggle paying off their consumer loans after debt burdens swelled to records, Bloomberg News reported. Volumes under Intrum AB’s existing credit-management services contracts in the two countries, in which it collects money from non-paying clients of financial institutions, grew by more than 15 percent in the first half of the year.

Deutsche Bank is set to lose as much as €200m in revenue a year unless chief executive Christian Sewing can reverse a recent surge in funding costs, the Financial Times reported. Executives have made reducing the cost of issuing debt a top priority after a chastening summer for the German lender, people familiar with their thinking said. The push comes after its credit rating was downgraded, its shares continued to tumble and the price of insuring its debt doubled on fears of contagion from political crises in Italy and Turkey.

As a growing number of emerging markets teeter on the brink of crisis, we’re hearing more and more about “original sin.” No, this isn’t about Adam and Eve’s transgressions. The concept, coined by economists Barry Eichengreen and Ricardo Hausmann, refers to the inability of most nations — and their corporations — to borrow abroad in their own currency, a Bloomberg View reported. Instead, they necessarily borrow in other currencies. Turkey, for example, has accumulated significant debts denominated in dollars.

Second-round bids put in by Russia's VTB Group-backed Numetal Ltd, ArcelorMittal and Vedanta will be opened on Monday, people with direct knowledge of the development said. The Resolution Professional, overseeing the auction of Essar Steel to recover over Rs 49,000 crore of unpaid loans, sent emails to all the three bidders to be present on Monday for the opening of the second round of bids, they said. This follows an NCLAT judgement last week on the eligibility of bids.

Troubled Debenhams has called in advisers to help save the chain, and is considering its options which include store closures and insolvency, The Sun reported. The embattled department store chain is fighting to keep its 240 stores open following a sharp fall in profits and tumbling share prices as consumers turn to online shopping. After issuing three profit warnings this year, the chain had already announced plans to cut up to 90 jobs at its headquarters and 320 store management jobs.