The price of Italian government bonds dropped sharply on Wednesday afternoon in a renewed bout of selling amid wider woes for risk assets, the Financial Times reported. The yield on two-year Italian debt — which moves inversely to price — hit 1.435 per cent at one point, up 16 basis points from the day’s open to the highest level since early June. Meanwhile the 10-year yield rose by 12 basis points on the day to 3.2 per cent, also the highest level for two months.

PwC should have flagged significant doubts over the future of BHS in an audit that was completed just days before the now collapsed British retailer was sold for a token one pound in 2015, a regulator said on Wednesday. BHS, which was sold in 2015 by billionaire retailer Philip Green’s Taveta Group, had 163 stores and 11,000 staff when it collapsed a year later, triggering a political firestorm, Reuters reported. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) watchdog in June fined PwC a record 6.5 million pounds ($8.3 million) and former partner Stephen Denison 325,000 pounds.

British home improvement retailer Homebase said on Tuesday it planned to close 42 stores, putting 1,500 jobs at risk, with new owner Hilco Capital seeking to reduce its cost base in a brutal trading environment, Reuters reported. Hilco acquired the struggling chain from Australian group Wesfarmers for a nominal 1 pound in May. Homebase said the proposed closures form part of a so-called Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) restructuring, allowing the business to avoid insolvency or administration.

Sports Direct International Plc says it will continue to operate most of House of Fraser Ltd.’s 59 U.K. and Ireland department stores after rescuing the chain from near collapse, Bloomberg News reported. “Our aim is to keep at least 80 percent of the stores open,” Liam Rowley, Sports Direct’s head of strategic investments, said Tuesday in an interview on Bloomberg TV with Anna Edwards and Manus Cranny.

Croatian food producer and retailer Agrokor, which is in the process of being taken over by its creditors, reported a big rise in first-half core earnings on Monday, as cost cuts helped to offset lower revenues, Reuters reported. The largest private company in the Balkans with 52,000 staff said earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) jumped 70.5 percent year-on-year to 729.7 million Croatian kuna ($112 million). That was despite a 13.3 percent drop in non-consolidated revenues to 11 billion kuna.

Opposition politicians and consumer advocates have criticised Ulster Bank for agreeing to sell a €1.4 billion portfolio of distressed Irish home loans to the US investment giant, Cerberus Capital Management. The portfolio, known as Project Scariff, includes about 2,300 owner-occupied home loans, as well as 2,900 buy-to-let mortgages secured on investment properties, The Irish Times reported. The deal is the third such sale by an Irish bank in recent weeks, following similar moves by Permanent TSB and KBC Bank Ireland.

In a related story, The Irish Times reported that Turkey’s economic crisis poses a threat to European banks with business in the country. Spain’s BBVA, Italy’s UniCredit, France’s BNP Paribas, Dutch bank ING and Britain’s HSBC are the most exposed to Turkey and vulnerable to its free-falling currency. Analysts see as manageable even a worst case scenario which they deem unlikely at present – under which these banks would be forced to write off completely their local operations or exit the country.

Analysts believe shareholders will back troubled Irish-Swiss baker Aryzta’s bid to raise €800 million despite seeing the group’s value fall by €420 million in two weeks, The Irish Times reported. The maker of Cuisine de France bread said on Monday it intended to raise €800 million to reduce debt, which stood at €2 billion earlier this year, and give it the finance needed to implement a business plan. Aryzta said it would raise the cash by issuing new shares, giving the right to current investors to buy the stock in proportion to their existing holdings.

Air France KLM shares slumped on Monday after the airline’s biggest pilots union said over the weekend that there were risks of further strikes if pay talks with management did not resume, The Irish Times reported. Air France KLM shares were down 5.8 per cent in early trading, making them the worst performers on Paris’ SBF-120 equity index. The stock has fallen by around 40 per cent so far in 2018.

There’ll likely be no cake to celebrate the 10th birthday this month of Irish-Swiss baker Aryzta. It is probably looking to raise some dough. In the week following July 31st, the end of its financial year, about €200 million was wiped off its value, The Irish Times reported. Its shares, mainly traded in Zurich, plummeted by 23 per cent to 11.12 francs (€9.63). By the close of business on Thursday, it was worth less than €840 million against €1.1 billion nine days earlier. That’s roughly a quarter of what it was worth just five months ago.