Headlines

UK pub and brewing group Marston’s said it expected a fall in profit this year as it took a hit from lower food sales, sending its share price sharply down, the Financial Times reported. Shares in the Wolverhampton-group, which runs the Pitcher & Piano and Revere chains, fell as much as 11 per cent on Tuesday morning after it forecast an underlying pre-tax profit of about £101m for the year to September, down from £104m a year earlier. The group said it had suffered lower food sales, while higher labour costs and investment meant its profit margin would be below last year’s.

The Greek government has set out its blueprint for helping the country’s banks reduce a 75 billion euro ($83 billion) pile of toxic debt left over from the last recession, Bloomberg News reported. The plan aims to speed up sales of non-performing loans by Greek lenders, repackaging them into securities with the state guaranteeing the safest portions. It’s based on a model used in Italy but unlike that program, the safest tranches of Greece’s NPLs will have a BB- rating -- three steps into junk territory.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Turkish state-owned lender Halkbank with a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran, ramping up pressure on Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he conducts a military offensive on Syria, The Wall Street Journal reported. Prosecutors say some Turkish and Iranian government officials received payouts of tens of millions of dollars in exchange for promoting and helping to conceal the alleged scheme, which occurred between 2012 and 2016.

For years, the Essar Group, an Indian business empire built by brothers Shashi and Ravi Ruia, happily racked up debt, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. That changed more than two years ago when the government of prime minister Narendra Modi introduced a new bankruptcy regime that favoured banks over borrowers — however powerful the latter may have been. The Ruia family lost control of Essar in July 2017 when the country’s central bank ordered the bankruptcy code to be used against defaulters, including Essar Steel. Essar Oil was sold to a Rosneft-led group in 2017.

The trial against one of the alleged ringleaders behind $2 billion in fraudulent loans to Mozambique kicked off in New York on Tuesday, the same day citizens of the southern African nation cast judgment at the ballot box on whether their government had done enough to hold accountable officials involved in the secret deals, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mozambique, one of the world’s poorest countries, plunged into a debilitating crisis after the loans were disclosed in 2016, following reporting by The Wall Street Journal.

Ashmore Group Plc and Venezuela’s government may be headed for a legal battle as a potential default on the state oil company’s 2020 bonds sets off a rush to lay claim to the nation’s most prized asset abroad, Bloomberg News reported. Ashmore, which owned about half the securities as of June 30, has urged Petroleos de Venezuela to make the $913 million payment on its 2020 notes due Oct. 28, yet the team advising National Assembly President Juan Guaido claims it doesn’t have the funds, three people familiar with the matter said.

The former chief executive of bankrupt travel firm Thomas Cook said on Tuesday he understood public anger over his pay but defended his record, saying he had worked tirelessly to try to save the company, Reuters reported. Thomas Cook, the world’s oldest travel firm, collapsed last month after it failed to finalize a restructuring plan, stranding over a hundred thousand passengers.

An Indian irrigation firm has been cut to “selective default” by S&P Global Ratings, as more cracks emerge in India’s offshore junk bond market, Bloomberg News reported. Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd. missed certain principal payments under its working capital facilities and S&P sees a “high likelihood” that the company would be classified as a nonperforming asset by its bankers. A selective default means S&P believes a firm has defaulted on a specific issue but will meet its other obligations.

Eurozone industrial production ticked higher in August but economists warned the rebound was insufficient to stem a contraction during the third quarter, the Financial Times reported. The key gauge of output rose 0.4 per cent in August from July, according to Eurostat, the bloc's statistics institute. It was down 2.8 per cent from the same month last year, marking the tenth-consecutive annual fall — the longest drop since the eurozone debt crisis eight years ago.

The World Bank cut India’s economic growth forecast by the most among South Asian nations on Sunday, below the outlook pegged by the nation’s central bank for this year, mainly because of a deceleration in domestic demand, Bloomberg News reported. India’s gross domestic product growth is projected at 6% in the fiscal year started on April 1, compared with 7.5% forecast in April and 6.8% recorded a year earlier, the bank said in its latest South Asia Economic Focus report. Growth is expected to gradually recover to 6.9% in 2020-21 and to 7.2% in the following year, it said.