Intu Properties' chief executive officer is stepping down as the British shopping centre operator swung to a loss and warned of lower rental income growth for the full year, sending its shares down 9 percent to a record low. Intu's update follows a failed 3.4 billion-pound takeover bid by rival Hammerson in April and a string of bankruptcies of retailers that has hit the company hard, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Rebel shareholders narrowly won a vote to oust the entire board of Ellaktor, Greece’s largest construction company, at Wednesday’s annual meeting in Athens, the Financial Times reported. According to the final count of proxy votes, 52.92 per cent of votes cast were in favour of a new nine-member board to be headed by Georgios Provopoulos, a former central bank governor, as chairman, while 47.08 per cent backed the current board led by Dimitris Koutras, a co-founder of Ellaktor and Leonidas Bobolas, head of the company’s construction concessions arm.

Banco Santander reported a 3 per cent fall in second-quarter net earnings, hit by €300m in integration costs from the takeover of troubled lender Banco Popular and a strong euro, the Financial Times reported. The eurozone’s largest bank by market capitalisation said total net profits, including the Popular charge, slipped to €1.698bn for the three months to June, down from €1.75bn in 2017. Analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected net earnings of €1.67bn for the quarter.

Insolvency and restructuring specialist Duff & Phelps has got permission to build almost 460 apartments on a site once controlled by bubble-era developer John Fleming, The Irish Times reported. An Bord Pleanála has given Duff & Phelps the go-ahead to build 459 dwellings in six five- to 14-storey blocks on Carmanhall Road in Sandyford in south Dublin. The site originally belonged to Tivway, the group led by developer Mr Fleming, which went into receivership with debts of about €1 billion in early 2010 following failed efforts to engineer a rescue.

Deutsche Bank AG vowed to maintain its position in fixed-income trading after recording its weakest second quarter in that business since the global financial crisis, as Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing accelerates the lender’s turnaround effort, Bloomberg News reported. Income from buying and selling fixed-income securities slumped 17 percent from a year earlier to 1.37 billion euros ($1.6 billion), the lowest figure for the period since 2008, Germany’s largest bank said on Wednesday. The five largest U.S.

Amid rising rates, ballooning debt levels and widening spreads there’s one statistic that gives comfort to credit investors: default rates. Insulated by cheap money from the QE era and bolstered by cash on their balance sheets, it remains rare for companies in Europe and the U.S. to miss debt payments, Bloomberg News reported. Among higher-risk speculative-grade firms the default rate fell to 2.9 percent last quarter, and may drop further to 2.1 percent by year-end, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

German business expectations declined for the eighth month in a row in July even as the current assessment brightened, amid persistent concerns over the Washington-led trade battle, according to new data released on Wednesday. The Ifo Institute’s gauge of business expectations in the eurozone’s largest economy slipped to 98.2 in July from 98.5 in the previous month, the Financial Times reported. It ended last year at 102.7. Germany has a large, open economy with a big factory sector, meaning headwinds to global trade have an outsize effect on the country.

Banks from Britain must draw up plans showing how they will staff and operate their new bases in the European Union after Brexit to avoid ending up with "empty shells,” the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. It is the clearest sign yet that the shift in banking jobs from Britain may rise significantly from the modest 3,500 to 12,000 forecast in the short term by the City of London financial district. About 20 banks have applied so far for licences to open bases or expand existing ones in the eurozone by March 2019.

Deloitte LLP is offering Italy’s builders a way to get billions of euros in unpaid bills from public works projects off their balance sheets -- selling them at a discount to hedge funds. Construction companies that say they incurred costs in excess of agreed terms of public infrastructure projects have to pursue the difference in what can be a lengthy legal process, Bloomberg News reported.

Ulster Bank is seeking regulatory approval to close a compensation scheme for small companies whose businesses were negatively affected by being put into a controversial restructuring unit during the financial crisis, The Irish Times reported. Sources said the bank is in contact with the Central Bank of Ireland about agreeing a deadline by which customers will have to make a complaint on their treatment by the lender’s now-defunct global restructuring group (GRG).