Headlines

Euro zone retail sales rose roughly in line with expectations in June though less steeply than in May, when consumers flocked back to shops after coronavirus restrictions were eased, Reuters reported. The European Union's statistics office Eurostat said on Wednesday that retail sales in the 19 countries sharing the euro rose 1.5% month-on-month in June and were 5.0% higher than a year earlier. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 1.7% monthly rise and forecast a 4.5% year-on-year increase. The monthly increase was not uniform.

China Construction Bank Corp. on behalf of creditors sued Suning Appliance Group Co Ltd. to recoup about $255 million lost on debt, Bloomberg News reported. The group, which used to own retail giant Suning.com Co., and its owner, father-and-son pair Zhang Jindong and Zhang Kangyang, were listed as defendants in an Aug. 2 claim filed in the Hong Kong High Court. The suit is being brought by China Construction Bank (Asia) Corp., which is acting on behalf of creditors. Suning Group declined to comment.

One of the major Romanian online retailers, CEL.ro, filed for insolvency after its turnover plunged somehow unexpectedly last year and its losses deepened, Romania-Insider.com reported. Corsar Online, the operator behind the online shop CEL, reported its revenues dwindled by 38% year-on-year to RON 127 mln (EUR 26 mln) last year - the year when the market was particularly favorable to the online electro-IT retailers like CEL.ro. The company’s losses quadrupled to RON 3.5 mln in 2020, though.

India's financial-crime agency has asked Walmart's Flipkart and its founders to explain why they shouldn't face a penalty of $1.35 billion for alleged violation of foreign investment laws, three sources and an agency official told Reuters. The Enforcement Directorate agency has been investigating e-commerce giants Flipkart and Amazon.com Inc for years for allegedly bypassing foreign investment laws that strictly regulate multi-brand retail and restrict such companies to operating a marketplace for sellers.

AIB has set aside €100 million to compensate investors affected by a failed series of boom-time UK commercial property funds, including clients who were not part of a settlement agreement with the lender last month after taking legal action, the Irish Times reported. The High Court was told on July 8th that AIB had settled 270 cases over investor losses from collapsed UK property funds, known as the Belfry Funds.

Advertising company Leo Group said it is applying to a Chinese court to freeze 356 million yuan ($55.06 million) in assets of Evergrande Group for overdue payments, becoming the latest supplier to sue the indebted property developer, Nikkei Asia reported. Leo's lawsuit, which was disclosed in a securities filing late on Monday, comes after Huaibei Mining Holdings said last week its construction unit was suing Evergrande regarding 400 million yuan in overdue fees.

Shareholders in Mallinckrodt, the Dublin-based but U.S.-run drugmaker in the middle of a bankruptcy reorganization, are being urged by a leading corporate advisory firm to vote against some directors as a parting rebuke over its handling of the U.S. opioid crisis and executive pay, the Irish Times reported. Mallinckrodt filed for bankruptcy in Delaware last October as the company was overwhelmed by lawsuits accusing it of deceptively marketing opioids. The company is pursuing a U.S.

South Korea's consumer inflation accelerated in July, staying at a nine-year peak marked in May, as hot weather conditions lifted prices of fresh food, while oil products and housing rental and other services costs continued rising, Reuters reported. The consumer price index (CPI) last month rose 2.6% year-on-year, Statistics Korea data showed on Tuesday, accelerating from a 2.4% increase in June and beating a 2.4% increase tipped in a Reuters survey.

Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the state utility that supplies most of South Africa’s power, said it’s seeking to appoint advisers on how to restructure itself into three separate units, a reorganization that was proposed to let it to better deal with an untenable debt burden, Bloomberg News reported. The separation of the Johannesburg-based company into transmission, generation and distribution units was first raised by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa more than two years ago.