Headlines

France has launched a long-awaited and highly contentious overhaul of its pension system, setting up another battle between labour unions and President Emmanuel Macron, who is trying to push ahead with his reform agenda following months of anti-government protests, the Financial Times reported.

Japan’s Akebono Brake Industry Co Ltd said on Thursday it will receive about $185 million from a corporate turnaround fund to help restructure its money-losing business, sending its shares sharply higher, Reuters reported. The supplier of brakes to General Motors Co, which makes up about a quarter of Akebono’s sales, and other automakers said it would issue new shares worth 20 billion yen ($185 million) to Japan Industrial Solutions. Shares of Akebono soared as much as 43% to 166 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, before closing up 8%.

It's been barely 24 hours since Ursula von der Leyen was confirmed as the next head of the European Commission and EU capitals are already engaged in diplomatic manoeuvres to fill another top job, the Financial Times reported. At stake is the International Monetary Fund, which will need a new managing director now that Christine Lagarde is leaving to become the next president of the European Central Bank on November 1. The IMF post has been held by Europeans ever since the institution was created; EU nationals (often French) have led the Fund while Americans have run the World Bank.

British media company Reach Plc said on Thursday it was in the early stages of discussions to buy certain assets of JPI Media, which publishes the Yorkshire Post and the Scotsman. Shares of Reach, which publishes Daily Mirror, jumped as much as 9% after the news, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. By 0919 GMT, the stock handed back some of those gains and were up 4.7% at 84.65 pence. Johnston Press, later renamed JPI Media, was bought by its bondholders last year after it filed for bankruptcy protection.

Senior officials from Greece's creditor institutions are meeting in Athens with the country's new conservative government, which is planning to begin dismantling bailout-era taxes next month, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. Representatives of the European Commission, European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and a eurozone rescue fund were holding meetings Thursday with at least five cabinet ministers, government officials said.

Lebanon needs a plan to manage its huge public debt that offers a chance to “liberate the public budget from the burden of a deadly accumulation of debt and debt service”, finance minister Ali Hassan Khalil said on Thursday. Khalil told parliament that such a plan would need to be discussed by stakeholders including the government, the central bank and commercial banks, Reuters reported. “This requires a dialogue by the government, between the government and (parliament), a dialogue in which the central bank participates and the banks participate.

As negative yields engulf everything from Brazil’s state oil company to Hungarian sovereign debt to euro junk, investors are seeking refuge in high-yield bond ETFs, Bloomberg News reported. Europe-listed funds have attracted over 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion) since January, more than in any full year going back to at least 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. The largest exchange-traded fund tracking the debt -- BlackRock Inc.’s 8.5 billion-euro IHYG -- took in 640 million euros in the week ended July 5, smashing a record it set just two weeks before, the data show.

Online fashion retailer Asos warned profits would be more than a third lower than expected this year due to a botched warehouse upgrade that limited the availability of stock to shoppers in the US and Europe, the Financial Times reported. The group’s share price dropped by nearly a quarter early on Thursday as it said pre-tax profit would be about £30m-£35m in 2019, compared with the more than £55m forecast by analysts.

Care Ratings Ltd. has put its chief on leave pending a probe into an anonymous complaint received by the nation’s markets regulator, adding to the troubles for India’s credit assessment industry, Bloomberg News reported. Care’s board placed Chief Executive Officer Rajesh Mokashi on leave, the company said in an exchange filing Wednesday evening. Earlier this month, the local unit of Moody’s Investors Service sent its managing director on leave amid an inquiry into a controversial rating decision.

A no-deal Brexit could plunge the British economy into a yearlong recession, hammer the pound and house prices and add tens of billions of pounds to government borrowing, according to the U.K fiscal watchdog, Bloomberg News reported. The Office for Budget Responsibility analysis is based on the “less disruptive” of two no-deal Brexit scenarios modeled by the International Monetary Fund in April. “Heightened uncertainty and declining confidence deter investment, while higher trade barriers with the EU weigh on exports,” the OBR said in its fiscal risks report published Thursday.