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The Lebanese government is deferring payments to contractors and public entities, improving the budget numbers but endangering a lifeline for businesses, Bloomberg News reported. Delayed payments for this year alone have exceeded $900 million, pushing the outstanding total to over $2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The government owes contractors about $300 million, half of which was incurred in 2019, said Maroun Helo, head of the Lebanese Contractors Syndicate of Public Works and Buildings. Contractors are defaulting on debt, he said.

Factory gates shutting for the last time; a vast steelworks teetering on bankruptcy; for sale signs hoisted over some of the grandest names in British industry, the Financial Times reported. Scenes like these that scarred communities in decades past are now coming back to haunt the UK, following a run of troubling developments at some of the country’s largest manufacturers that have left thousands of jobs on the line.

When ArcelorMittal temporarily laid off about 1,400 Italian workers at its Taranto plant last month, it was just the latest sign that the eurozone’s economic weakness was feeding into the labour market in the bloc’s third-largest economy, the Financial Times reported. The lay-offs — which will last for 13 weeks and are part of a broader cutback in the steelmaker’s European production volumes — came as a result of “really critical” market conditions, ArcelorMittal Italia chief executive Matthieu Jehl said at the time.

UK company insolvencies rose to a five-year high in the second quarter of this year, in a possible sign of Brexit-related political uncertainty weighing on businesses, the Financial Times reported. Underlying corporate insolvencies rose 2.6 per cent from the first to the second quarter of the year, and are 12 per cent higher than the same period last year, according to the Insolvency Service, a government agency. The figures relate to the second quarter, when Brexit was delayed and Boris Johnson emerged as the frontrunner to replace prime minister Theresa May.

Turkey is leaving banks to sort out the restructuring of debt by themselves. With half of 400 billion lira ($72 billion) of troubled loans in the country already reorganized, the government won’t cover any losses incurred from bad loans, Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak told reporters in the capital, Ankara, Bloomberg News reported. The economy will be better off once the balance has been dealt with, he said. “The level of success depends on them,” the minister said. “Some say ‘government should cover losses’ -- that won’t happen.

Dubai’s financial regulator fined Abraaj Group, the world’s biggest private equity insolvency to date, a record $315 million for deceiving investors and misappropriating their funds, Bloomberg News reported. The fines ordered by the Dubai Financial Services Authority come as Abraaj, once one of the world’s most influential emerging-market investors, faces legal action in the U.S.

The number of insolvent companies in England and Wales hit its highest in more than five years in the second quarter of 2019, according to data on Tuesday that showed businesses under rising financial pressure as Brexit nears, Reuters reported. The Insolvency Service, a government agency, said 4,321 companies entered insolvency in the April-June period on an underlying basis, excluding bulk closures of personal service companies. This was up from 4,213 in the first quarter and marked the largest total since early 2014.

Bankrupt German wind turbine manufacturer Senvion has sufficient financing to stay afloat until the end of August, Chief Executive Yves Rannou said at a townhall meeting, according to a person who attended the meeting, Reuters reported. The company is hoping to strike a deal to sell some of its assets but not the whole company by then, Rannou said at the meeting on Tuesday, adding that talks with staff would now start regarding units for which no buyer can be found, the source said.

A consortium of lenders, led by Syndicate Bank, is set to agree to a restructuring scheme for Reliance Infrastructure Ltd.’s Mumbai Metro project, two people in the know told BloombergQuint on condition of anonymity, BloombergQuint reported. The restructuring plan involves extending the tenure of the Rs 2,200 crore in outstanding loans by two years, the people quoted above said. In addition, lenders will likely agree to a cut in interest rates to around 9 percent from over 11 percent currently, which will help the metro project repay its dues on time, the people said.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is the "last hope" for Africa's most advanced economy, but his government must turn incentive policies into laws to secure more Chinese investment, a senior Chinese diplomat told Reuters, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. China is South Africa's largest trading partner and has pledged more investment than any other country since Ramaphosa embarked on a drive last year to attract $100 billion of new investment to lift the economy out of a slump.