Headlines

The Chinese company in pole position to save British Steel is aiming to strike a deal to take over the failed manufacturer by the middle of this month, according to people briefed on the situation, the Financial Times reported. Jingye Group has emerged as the frontrunner to buy the stricken steelmaker out of insolvency, following almost six months of uncertainty for 5,000 workers who are mostly based at the large Scunthorpe plant in Lincolnshire.

Germany’s finance minister has offered hope of a breakthrough in plans to create a full eurozone banking union by ending Berlin’s opposition to a common scheme to protect savers’ deposits, the Financial Times reported. Olaf Scholz said that Europe’s global role would be undermined if it failed to complete the integration of the eurozone’s financial sector. The plan to centralise oversight of eurozone banks was conceived seven years ago in response to the region’s deep sovereign debt crisis. “The need to deepen and complete European banking union is undeniable.

Europe’s private banks and asset managers are facing a crisis as business models are hollowed out by negative interest rates, the chief executive of Edmond de Rothschild has warned, the Financial Times reported. Vincent Taupin, who has run the Swiss bank since March, also cautioned that neither acquisitions or attracting more money from customers offers an easy answer for the industry.

Lebanon’s credit rating was cut one notch further into junk territory by Moody’s Investors Service on Tuesday as protests roil the nation, reflecting the increased likelihood of debt rescheduling or other steps that may constitute a default, Bloomberg News reported. Moody’s analyst Elisa Parisi-Capone said the viability of the currency’s peg to the U.S. dollar and macroeconomic stability are both threatened by social protests and a loss of investor confidence.

Despite allegations to the contrary, “reprofiling” is not an Argentine euphemism for debt restructuring. It is a distinct liability management exercise that is optimal, from a welfare standpoint, for certain well-defined sovereign debt crises. In our (preliminary) opinion, Argentina’s situation meets the required criteria for a reprofiling that would defer its maturities for a relatively short period, while not reducing either the face value of its obligations to private creditors or their contractual coupons, the Financial Times reported in a commentary.

Shareholders in former Latvian bank Trasta suffered a setback on Tuesday when the European Court of Justice ruled that their action against the European Central Bank was inadmissible before the court, Reuters reported. The ECB withdrew Trasta Komercbanka’s banking license in 2016 after it broke rules to fight money laundering and terror financing. The General Court of the European Union had previously ruled in 2017 that the case of the group of shareholders was admissible. However, the European Court of Justice, the EU’s upper court, said that the lower court had erred in its judgment.

German tennis great Boris Becker has had his bankruptcy restrictions extended to 2031 after an investigation into assets and undisclosed transactions valued at more than 4.5 million pounds ($5.80 million), Reuters reported. Becker, who won six Grand Slam singles titles in his career including three at Wimbledon, was made bankrupt on June 21, 2017 in the London High Court. Under the terms of the bankruptcy order, the 51-year-old was bound to provide full disclosure of assets to the trustee and inform any lenders of his situation when seeking to borrow more than 500 pounds.

Mothercare is set to close all its British stores with the loss of at least 2,500 jobs after its domestic operations buckled under the weight of the pressures plaguing the retail sector, Reuters reported. The company, a baby products retailer that operates 1,010 overseas franchise stores, has fallen victim to extremely difficult conditions in Britain on the back of stiff competition from online retailers and rising costs. “The UK high street is facing a near existential problem with intensifying and compounding pressures across numerous fronts,” Mothercare Chairman Clive Whiley said.

Some vendors of BSNL and MTNL are mulling to move insolvency pleas against the state-run firms for non-payment of dues, estimated to be around Rs 20,000 crore, a senior industry body executive said on Monday, The Economic Times reported. The pending payments are against the supply of telecom gear and other goods to BSNL and MTNL as well as Rs 45,000-crore rural broadband project BharatNet, PHD Chamber of Commerce Telecom Committee chairman Sandeep Aggarwal told PTI. "The total pending payment of BSNL and MTNL vendors is around Rs 20,000 crore.

Saudi Aramco is undoubtedly huge and very profitable. But what’s the company worth? That question was one of many left unanswered Sunday when the company, the world’s dominant oil producer, announced it would sell a stake to investors, the International New York Times reported. Just about everything about the initial public offering remains to be determined in the coming days and weeks, including how large a portion Aramco will sell, and at what price. Most of the questions will revolve around decisions made by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s main policymaker.