Headlines

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries raised its 2018 earnings outlook, said it was seeing “a very strong launch” for its long-awaited migraine treatment Ajovy and expects to launch generic EpiPen in the fourth quarter. Teva raised its full-year forecast for adjusted EPS to $2.80-$2.95, from a previous estimate of $2.55-$2.80 and its shares were 8.5 percent higher in early U.S. trading, Reuters reported. The company also said it was on track with plans to reduce its workforce by 14,000, having let over 9,000 employees go so far. Net debt decreased by $800 million to $27.6 billion.

Dubai’s Arabtec Holding has hired New York-based investment bank Moelis & Co to work on a new debt-restructuring plan for the construction company, three sources told Reuters. The move comes little more than a year after Arabtec raised 1.5 billion dirhams ($408.4 million) in a rights issue to wipe out accumulated losses and separately asked banks to waive terms on its debt, Reuters reported.

South Africa’s finance minister said the nation’s troubled flag-carrier should be shut down, casting doubt on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s stated goal of saving what was once Africa’s biggest airline, the Financial Times reported. South African Airways “is lossmaking, it’s unlikely to sort out the situation, in my view we should close it down”, said Tito Mboweni, an outspoken former central bank governor, at an event with investors in New York on Thursday.

Credit Suisse reported a mixed set of third-quarter results, with revenue and net income missing expectations after a sharp fall in trading income, taking the shine off an almost 70 per cent surge in overall pre-tax profits, the Financial Times reported. The global markets division made an unexpected pre-tax loss of SFr96m ($96m) in the period after fixed-income revenues plunged 20 per cent, worse than the 15 per cent declines seen at Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas recently.

The $12.8 billion bankruptcy of shadow lender Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. is starting to offer a glimmer of hope. It’s about time. Unexpected defaults by the financier, owner and operator of Indian infrastructure assets have caused a liquidity squeeze, which has brought strained relations between the government and the central bank to breaking point, a Bloomberg View reported.

China’s domestic investors are more bearish than their overseas counterparts because confusing policy signals have convinced them the government is favoring state enterprises over private companies, Bloomberg News reported. That’s according to a Citigroup Inc. report from Oct. 31 which says entrepreneurs see government policies "turning left" in favor of state enterprises even as officials profess to "turn right" in support of private companies and further reform and opening up.

Less than six months in office, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is staring down a possible credit rating downgrade in his government’s first budget.

Turkey could use a so-called bad bank to provide relief to lenders hurt by the soaring number of bankruptcies and restructurings, according to a Houlihan Lokey executive, Bloomberg News reported. “It allows liquidity to flow back to the banks and allows banks to raise capital,” Joseph Julian, the advisory firm’s managing director and co-head of the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, said in an interview in Istanbul.

The new board of India’s Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) submitted a plan to revive the debt-laden firm to a company law tribunal on Wednesday, paving the way to a potential resolution of the group’s future, Reuters reported. The Indian government this month took control of IL&FS, a major infrastructure financing and development company, after it defaulted on some of its debt, triggering fears of contagion across India’s financial system.

Italy’s political tensions with the European Union and the accompanying financial jitters are beginning to take a toll on the Italian economy, the latest data suggest. Italy’s unemployment rate ticked up to 10.1% in September from 9.8% the previous month, the country’s statistics agency said Wednesday, reversing a downward trend throughout this year, The Wall Street Journal reported. And on Tuesday, the statistics agency said gross domestic product was unchanged in the third quarter from the second, the worst showing in almost four years, while business confidence fell in October.