Administrators for bankrupt technical services company Imtech said on Wednesday they had found buyers for two more units, securing a further 248 jobs. Imtech Industrial International and Ventilex have been bought by asset manager Techim, which looks after the financial interests of several wealthy families. In addition, parts of Imtech Building Services are also being sold and sector peer Unica has agreed to take over contracts worth €150m. Imtech’s Irish arm and Imtech UK may also be sold to British investment house Endless, which is now in exclusive talks with the administrators.

Romania's financial regulator ASF withdrew the operating licence of the country's second-largest insurer Astra Asigurari on Wednesday and said it will start the process of declaring it insolvent. ASF chief Misu Negritoiu said Astra Asigurari, which has a market share of just over 10 percent, had a liquidity coverage ratio of 0.03 at the end of June and additional capital needs of 968 million lei ($248.19 million). The company has been under special administration since early 2014.

Madrid has sought to draw a line under austerity, setting out a budget proposal that includes tax cuts, higher salaries for public workers and more spending on education, defence and diplomacy. In a sign of the country’s return to economic strength, ministers vowed to couple spending increases with further budget consolidation. Public debt is set to fall to 98.2 per cent of gross domestic product, the first decline since the start of the crisis.

World trade recorded its biggest contraction since the financial crisis in the first half of this year, according to figures that will fuel a debate over whether globalisation has peaked, the Financial Times reported. The volume of global trade fell 0.5 per cent in the three months to June compared with the first quarter, the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, keepers of the World Trade Monitor, said on Tuesday.

Ukraine’s government is nearing a restructuring deal with its creditors that would call for a 20% reduction in the value of the country’s bonds, marking a possible breakthrough in negotiations that have been deadlocked for months, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported. Since March, the Ukrainian government has been locked in tense restructuring talks with a group of creditors who hold almost half the country’s outstanding debt.

Prima TV, a commercial TV channel owned by Romanian businessman Cristian Burci, entered insolvency after the Bucharest Court admitted the application for opening the procedure against the debtor, Romania-Insider reported. The court also appointed SMDA Insolvency SPRL as judicial administrator, reports local Mediafax. Prima Broadcasting Group SRL, the company that owns the audio-visual license of Prima TV, filed the insolvency request on August 6.

Bad news from China has sparked a firestorm in the developing countries that feed its vast industrial machine, leaving a swath of economies with few good ways to escape a crunch, The Wall Street Journal reported. In Indonesia, coal once bound for China is piled up in port. In South Africa, mines that fed China’s voracious demand for metals are firing workers. In financial markets, investors have responded by pulling out. On Monday, the currencies of Russia, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil and other commodity exporters tumbled to multiyear lows against the U.S. dollar.

State authorities have expressed concern at evidence of bogus self-employment and contracting work which may be depriving the Government of tax revenue and workers of sick pay and other protections, the Irish Times reported. Joint investigations involving the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Social Protection uncovered almost 200 cases in the construction industry alone over the past year. But authorities have also found evidence of a blurring of the lines between employees and the self-employed in a range of other sectors such as IT, media and consultancy.

The new owners of BHS are set to raise £70m as they attempt to rescue the beleaguered department store chain just months after acquiring it, The Telegraph reported. Retail Acquisitions, which bought BHS in March from Sir Philip Green, are in talks with a number of lenders, including hedge funds, to secure new financing to implement future plans. The little-known vehicle, which is led by former stockbroker Keith Smith, confirmed the talks in a statement, saying: “We have said all along that we would refinance to help accelerate the turnaround plan for the UK business.

Greek bank bonds dropped like a stone this week as the prospect of painful haircuts came to the fore, potentially heralding a new era for senior debt investors who have previously been protected throughout Europe's various financial crises, Reuters reported. The Eurogroup's statement after approving Greece's 86bn third bailout increased the chances of losses being imposed on senior debt by placing senior bondholders at risk of bail-in while explicitly excluding depositors.