Headlines

Businesses that fail to adapt to climate change will go bust, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Wednesday, but others will be able to profit handsomely from funding green investment, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. "Companies that don't adapt - including companies in the financial system - will go bankrupt without question. (But) there will be great fortunes made along this path aligned with what society wants," Carney told Channel 4 News.

Italy's biggest retail bank Intesa Sanpaolo has clinched a deal with U.S. hedge fund Davidson Kempner over 10 billion euros (£9.16 billion) in problem loans, moving closer to a 2021 target of cutting soured debts to 6% of total lending, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. In reporting a higher-than-expected net profit for the second quarter, Intesa on Wednesday said it would sell 3 billion euros in so-called 'unlikely-to-pay' (UTP) loans to Prelios, a loan recovery specialist owned by the New York-based fund.

Shares in British shopping centre operator Intu sank more than 21% on Wednesday after reporting a fall in first-half net rental income on Wednesday, the latest sign of weakness in a struggling British retail sector, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Intu, which scrapped its dividend earlier this year and changed management after two failed takeover bids, said it was adopting a new five-year strategy to reshape its business and focus on fixing its balance sheet.

Samarco Mineracao SA, the Brazilian mining venture that hasn’t operated since a deadly dam collapse in 2015, is close to regaining a license to restart production and move closer to paying back $3.5 billion in defaulted debt, Bloomberg News reported. The license will most likely be granted within the second half of this year, the Minas Gerais state environmental agency press department said in an email. A Samarco spokeswoman declined to comment. Negotiations with creditors will resume in October following the license renewal, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans.

Bosnian authorities on Wednesday ordered the financial and tax police to probe operations at the country’s sole aluminum smelter before it was shut earlier this month over a huge debt it incurred due to high electricity and alumina prices, Reuters reported. The temporary closure of Aluminij Mostar, one of Bosnia’s biggest exporters, has put the jobs of about 900 workers at the plant, based in the southern town of Mostar, at risk.

The eurozone’s economy showed further signs of a slowdown on Wednesday, raising the chances that the European Central Bank will launch a big package of stimulus measures in September, the Financial Times reported. The single currency area’s economy expanded by just 0.2 per cent in the second quarter according to Eurostat, the European Commission’s statistics bureau, confirming that growth slowed during the spring on the back of weaker global demand.

Freeman Nomvalo, the new chief restructuring officer for Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., will divide his time between managing the unbundling of the loss-making state power giant and his job as head of the South African Institute for Chartered Accountants, Bloomberg News reported. The role taken by Nomvalo, relatively unknown among economists and analysts, will be more of a process manager than a standalone company executive, according to a statement by the Department of Public Enterprises.

GSM London, one of England’s largest privately owned higher education providers, has gone into administration after failing to find a buyer, leaving more than 3,500 students uncertain about where they will complete their studies, the Financial Times reported. The board of the institution, formerly known as Greenwich School of Management, appointed two insolvency practitioners from the accountancy firm BDO on Wednesday, and said teaching would cease on its two campuses in Greenwich and Greenford, in north-west London, at the end of September.

German auto supplier Eisenmann, which supplied Tesla in 2015 with a new paint shop at its Freemont plant in California, filed for insolvency late on Monday, in a sign of the growing economic problems crushing profits in the auto sector, Reuters reported. Eisenmann, which has 3,000 employees and generated annual revenues of 723 million euros ($806 million) in 2017, filed for insolvency at the Stuttgart District Court. The Boeblingern, Germany-based company said it was now looking for a strategic partner for its Paint & Assembly, as well as its Application Technology businesses.

The economic challenge facing President Cyril Ramaphosa was laid bare as South Africa’s unemployment rate rose to its highest in more than a decade and the embattled state-owned Eskom power monopoly unveiled its biggest annual loss, the Financial Times reported. Joblessness in Africa’s most industrialised nation increased to 29 per cent in the second quarter, a 16-year high, according to official statistics released on Tuesday. The figure was 27.6 per cent in the first quarter.