Headlines

A sharp drop in German industrial production has added to fears that the country’s manufacturing slowdown has extended into 2019 and will weigh on the eurozone economy, the Financial Times reported. Industrial output fell 0.8 per cent in January, Germany’s statistics office said on Monday, in an indication of the threat to exports from weaker global demand and political uncertainty. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the data to show a rise of 0.5 per cent.

The UK Pensions Regulator has dropped its probe into whether Johnston Press used an insolvency process to dump £300m of pension liabilities into the industry-backed Pension Protection Fund, the Financial Times reported. The regulator opened an investigation in November after Johnston, the publisher of the Scotsman and Yorkshire Post, used a “pre-pack” insolvency to keep the business afloat. Pre-packs are legitimate procedures that allow a business to go into administration, with the assets then sold on to a new buyer, minus liabilities such as pension debt.

Outsourcing specialist Kier Group has revised its debt up by £50m after an accounting error, alarming investors and raising further concerns over the financial health of the industry, the Financial Times reported. Shares in the contractor, which employs 20,000 people on work ranging from rubbish collection for local authorities to building houses and schools, fell 13 per cent after it said it had revised its net debt as at December 31 up to £180.5m.

Are investors becoming too ebullient on emerging markets once more? The warm welcome recently extended by the bond market to Ecuador — a serial defaulter — seems a good example of the triumph of hope over experience. The Latin American country has defaulted on its debt with such regularity that it repaid a bond fully and on time for the first time in its history only in 2015, the Financial Times reported.

European officials sought to quell fears Greece is going off track just months after its bailout ended, talking up the country’s reform drive even though Athens has yet to fulfill the conditions attached to the disbursement of some 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in debt-relief aid, Bloomberg News reported. The decision to withhold the cash was taken at a meeting of euro-area finance ministers in Brussels on Monday, marking the delay of the first post-bailout payment the country is set to receive as part of a deal struck last year with its European creditors to ease its debt load.

As the battle between Mike Ashley and Debenhams Plc becomes ever more acrimonious, the department store chain is stepping up its efforts to see off the retail billionaire, a Bloomberg View reported. On Monday, it said it was close to securing about 150 million pounds ($194.9 million) of extra financing. This announcement follows last week’s severe profit warning. When you are fending off an activist investor or a potential predator – and Ashley is both, given that his Sports Direct International Plc has a 30 percent stake – it’s important to have some good news.

Investors are at it again, sorting through the heap of China’s credit data. Last month’s aggregate social-financing numbers, released Sunday, show the flow of new credit in (and around) the financial system fell 41 percent in February from a year earlier, a Bloomberg View reported. Retail loans posted their largest monthly drop on record. Companies continued to struggle with working-capital financing; bonds were the main channel of funding. Looking for signals of economic recovery in such noisy data is a fool’s errand. Just a month earlier, the same figure surged 51 percent.

Absa Group Ltd., the South African lender once controlled by Barclays Plc, fell for the ninth straight day to head for its longest streak of losses in six years as full-year profit missed analyst estimates, Bloomberg News reported. Banks in Africa’s most industrialized economy are battling to overcome the challenges of tepid gross domestic product growth and a loss of consumer and business confidence, pressuring their ability to generate revenue.

Brazilian airline Azul SA on Monday said it will seek to buy certain assets held by struggling rival Avianca Brasil for $105 million, on the same day a local court allowed the carrier to hold onto its planes despite mounting missed payments, Reuters reported. Under the proposed terms, Azul would buy airport slots and assume some aircraft leases from Avianca Brasil but inherit none of its debts.

The biggest losers in Airbus SE’s decision to wind down production of its A380 superjumbo may be taxpayers in France, Germany, Spain and the U.K., where governments made a big bet on the plane by lending more than 3.3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) to build it, Bloomberg News reported. Airbus agreed to reimburse the loans, together with interest, but payments were tied to A380 deliveries that began in 2007. The company announced last month that it would halt production of the world’s biggest passenger jet in 2021, putting the countries at risk of not getting back the remaining principal.