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Large European banks lined up on Wednesday to warn that the low interest rate environment would hurt their earnings, wiping hundreds of millions of euros off their market valuations, the Financial Times reported. UniCredit, Italy’s second-largest bank by market capitalisation, cut its revenue forecast for this year to €18.7bn from €19bn due to what chief executive Jean Pierre Mustier described as the “prevailing environment, with rates expected to be lower for much longer”.
The startling collapse of Abraaj Group, the once-mighty Middle Eastern private equity firm, continues to reverberate, Bloomberg News reported. Regulators in Dubai, where the dealmaker is based, have imposed a record fine, and Abraaj founder Arif Naqvi and a clutch of senior executives face legal charges in the U.S. The scandal, meanwhile, has all but frozen fundraising by other Dubai-based buyout companies. The Dubai Financial Services Authority fined two Abraaj Group companies a combined $315 million for deceiving investors and misappropriating funds.
India’s central bank took steps to alleviate a credit crunch at shadow banks and relaxed rules for lending to consumers as part of measures to boost the slowing economy, Bloomberg News reported. The Reserve Bank of India, which also cut benchmark interest rates to the lowest since 2010 on Wednesday, increased the exposure limit for banks to a single non-banking finance company to 20% of Tier 1 capital from 15% before. It also reduced the risk weight on consumer credit excluding card receivables to 100% from about 125%.
South African business confidence fell to the lowest level in four months in July as concerns over political uncertainty and state companies’ finances outweighed the positive effects of lower interest rates and higher commodity prices, Bloomberg News reported. An index measuring sentiment declined to 92 from 93.3 in June, the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry said Wednesday in an emailed statement. The median estimate of 4 economists in a Bloomberg survey was 93.
Beijing’s decision to let the renminbi fall below the symbolic level of 7 to the dollar was a political choice — but it would not be in China’s economic interests to “weaponise” its currency, economists say, the Financial Times reported. Monday’s move to increase the renminbi’s trading band came as a retaliation against the latest US threat of fresh tariffs. And although China’s central bank took steps to stabilise the currency on Tuesday, investors worry that the authorities could seek to put pressure on Washington by allowing a bigger devaluation.
Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht SA has proposed cutting the debt of its ethanol unit Atvos by between 35% to 75%, newspaper Valor Economico reported on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Citing court documents, Valor said Odebrecht proposed a 35% haircut on secured debt and 75% on the unsecured debt of its ethanol unit. Atvos debt subject to restructuring, excluding credits owed to other units of the Odebrecht conglomerate will have a global haircut of 46%, reducing its total financial debt from 10.5 billion reais ($2.65 billion) to 5.7 billion reais, the newspaper said.
A Spanish court has summoned Mikhail Fridman, who controls retailer DIA, to appear before it next month in an investigation into the bankruptcy of digital entertainment firm Zed Worldwide, a judicial source said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Fridman had been called to the Madrid-based Audiencia Nacional major crimes court on Sept. 12 after a Spanish anti-graft prosecutor alleged that the Russian tycoon had played a role in Zed’s bankruptcy, the judicial source told Reuters. A spokesman for Fridman said he had not received any legal notification regarding the summons.
India’s debt-laden shadow bank Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd (DHFL) on Tuesday said its creditors would not have to take any haircuts on principal payments under its resolution plan, sending shares up as much as 10%, Reuters reported. As part of the resolution plan, DHFL will also put a moratorium on repayments and seek funding from banks to start retail lending, the company said here after a meeting of the special committee for resolution plan.
Banking in a country where almost nobody defaults sounds easy. For Japan’s lenders, it is anything but. After almost three decades of near-zero, zero, and now negative interest-rate policies, Tokyo has pushed its banking system to its limit, The Wall Street Journal reported. The country’s smaller lenders in particular are facing an existential threat to their business models. Located in aging and shrinking prefectures, they lack the ability to increase fee-related incomes that major banks can raise. Japan has too many banks, and consolidating them into larger players will buy time.