Headlines

Beijing has called on banks to increase access to consumer finance in an effort to boost retail spending and bolster the economy. Many banks are issuing more credit cards - an extra 98 million last year - as well as marketing new types of cards and bumping up credit limits. But the surge in consumer lending has been accompanied by a rise in bad debts, with credit card delinquencies up 19 percent to 79 billion yuan ($11.7 billion) last year, 10 times the level in 2010, central bank data shows, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Brazilian retailer Magazine Luiza SA said in a filing on Monday it agreed to buy online shoe retailer Netshoes Ltd for approximately $62 million, Reuters reported. Magazine Luiza offered to pay $2 a share. Rival Brazilian retailer B2W had said earlier in April it was considering the acquisition of Netshoes. Netshoes stocks ended 3.9 percent down on Monday at $2.65. Shares have fallen by 85.3 percent since its initial public offering two years ago, as the company has struggled to turn a profit.

One of China’s largest listed drugmakers said it overstated cash holdings by $4.4 billion, sending its shares and bonds tumbling and heightening concerns about the quality of accounting in a country that has become a fast-growing part of global investment portfolios, Bloomberg News reported. Kangmei Pharmaceutical Co., a producer of traditional Chinese medicines, disclosed what it described as an accounting “error” in an exchange filing on Tuesday, about four months after telling investors that it was being investigated by regulators.

Colombia's Avianca Holdings SA said on Monday it is experiencing "reputational harm" from its association with Avianca Brasil, an air carrier that licenses its name and has canceled over 1,000 flights amid a bankruptcy restructuring, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Both Aviancas belong to the same family-owned business group, led by brothers German and Jose Efromovich, but are maintained as separate companies.

A delegation from a leading Chinese shipbuilding company has arrived in Croatia for talks about a possible investment in the country’s largest shipbuilder Uljanik, which is struggling to avoid bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Officials from the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) met Croatia’s Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and his economic team on Monday and will visit Uljanik’s docks in the northern Adriatic later this week. “After the visit to the docks we will give full and serious consideration to this matter,” CSIC’s Chief Executive Hu Wenming told reporters.

Sentiment waned this month in the eurozone to a five-year low, adding to recent surveys that have indicated weakening economic growth in the second quarter, the Financial Times reported. The industrial confidence indicator dropped to minus 4.1 in April, the lowest since 2014, data from the European Commission show. The reading follows disappointing manufacturing indicators, such as the IHS Markit purchasing manager index, which pointed to a prolonged contraction in the month.

When Parq Vancouver, a glimmering waterfront casino, opened amid much to-do in late 2017, few would’ve anticipated that a dirty money crackdown was about to throw the city’s roaring gambling business into turmoil, Bloomberg News reported. Vancouver-area casinos for years had been accepting millions of dollars in questionable cash from gamblers showing up with suitcases and hockey bags bulging with bills, according to British Columbia Attorney General David Eby. But new rules implemented last year to more tightly identify sources of funds have put a damper on that rollicking trade.

As talks on a Brexit deal fumble on, the uncertainty it has brought is hurting U.K. property firms and the financial services sector, Bloomberg News reported. The number of companies classed as being in “critical distress,” often a precursor to insolvency, rose 17 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, data compiled by financial adviser Begbies Traynor Group Plc show. It comes even as government figures suggest the economy picked up a little momentum in the first quarter, with GDP unexpectedly expanding in February for a second straight month. "Many U.K.

Banco Santander reported a 10.4 per cent drop in first-quarter net earnings, as restructuring costs in UK and Poland and high inflation in Argentina trimmed the bank’s performance, the Financial Times reported. The eurozone’s largest bank by market capitalisation said total net profit dropped to €1.84bn for the three months to March, down from €2.05bn in 2018. Analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected net earnings of €1.83bn for the quarter. Without foreign currency headwinds, the bank said profit for the quarter would have dropped 7.7 per cent.

The market for UK shopping centres has all but frozen up as buyers struggle to assign values to properties affected by troubled retailers restructuring their leases, the Financial Times reported. Just £20m of shopping centres changed hands in the first quarter of this year, according to data from CoStar, against a 10-year quarterly average of £783m. That was the weakest quarter since at least 2003 and “probably this century”, said Mark Stansfield, head of UK analytics at CoStar.