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.

The ups and downs of Italian government bonds are making the country’s banks queasy, Bloomberg News reported. UniCredit SpA and its smaller competitors are seeing their financial resilience being eroded after government bond values declined. The country’s banks hold by far the most state debt among lenders in Europe and with yields moving in reaction to politicians’ declarations, it’s not hard to see more risk ahead.

Standard Chartered Plc and Commerzbank AG are among companies targeted by investors suing Steinhoff International Holdings NV to recover as much as 12 billion euros ($13.8 billion) they claim they lost because of accounting irregularities at the retail giant, Bloomberg News reported. The suit was filed in Johannesburg and seeks class-action status to cover shareholders who bought Steinhoff stock from June 26, 2013 to December 5, 2017, South African lawfirm LHL Attorneys said in an emailed statement.

Greece’s exit from its bailout programme later this month is widely viewed as a big step forward in declaring an end to the crisis in the eurozone’s most troubled economy. But for the country’s banks, the end of the programme means it is about to become a little more difficult for them to secure cheap credit, the Financial Times reported. The reason? A quirk in the European Central Bank’s collateral policy that means from later this month Greek government bonds — along with other bonds guaranteed by Athens — will no longer be eligible for use in the bank’s auctions of cheap cash.

The future of House of Fraser will be settled in the next 48 hours as at least four bidders tabled rescue proposals for the struggling UK department store group. Two people familiar with the situation confirmed that Philip Day, the Dubai-based entrepreneur and owner of Edinburgh Woollen Mill, had put forward a plan that would avoid House of Fraser going into administration first, the Financial Times reported. Representatives for Mr Day declined to comment.

Ireland’s Henderson family said on Thursday it had agreed to buy around 50 Poundworld stores, having struck a deal with the administrator of the collapsed British discount retailer, Reuters reported. The 335-store Poundworld went into administration in June after its majority owner, the private equity group TPG Capital, failed to find a buyer for the struggling business which had a total workforce of about 5,100. Administrator Deloitte said last month that all Poundworld stores would close by the middle of August.

The ruble extended its steepest slide in almost two years as a fresh round of U.S. sanctions against Russia deepened concern about what could be targeted next, Bloomberg News reported. Investors who had been building long positions in the currency earlier in the summer rushed for the exit, causing a two-day plunge of as much as 5.1 percent. Analysts at Citibank said it looks like traders are already pricing in a worst-case scenario of sanctions on banks and new sovereign debt.

August may yet prove a sleepy month for the Italian bond market, but the last week has been a reminder not to take a summer lull for granted, the Financial Times reported. A renewed sell-off gripped the €2tn market late last week as the country’s populist Eurosceptic coalition government began negotiations on its debut budget, something the market had not expected until the autumn.

Greece has lived through eight lost years. Since 2010, its economy has shrunk by one-quarter, the disposable income of its citizens by-one third. More than 300,000 of those people have emigrated; among those left, unemployment is at 20 per cent. As the country prepares to draw a line under this grim period, with the international tutelage imposed after its bailout set formally to end on August 20, the question is whether the years of trauma will have acted as a purge — cleansing Greece of some of the problems that contributed to the crisis, the Financial Times reported.

Insolvency practitioner Gavin Jones discusses the kind of damages that might be claimed from a holding company or its directors in the event of the insolvency of a subsidiary – and the defences that might be available to mitigate these. With the Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) of House of Fraser reportedly hanging in the balance, the well-publicised difficulties facing the retail sector are widespread, Real Business reported.