Headlines

Outsourcing firm Mitie Group Plc said on Monday it would sell its pest control business to Rentokil Initial Plc for 40 million pounds cash, as it looks to focus on its core businesses as part of a restructuring, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The company, which provides cleaning, security and healthcare services, has been restructuring after a string of profit warnings, which it has blamed on rising costs and Brexit uncertainty.

Shares of Avocet Mining dropped more than 17 percent on Monday after warning that it could be broken up as the struggling gold miner continues talks with its largest shareholder, Elliott Management, to restructure its debt, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The company, which debuted on the London Stock Exchange in 2007 at 1,200 pence a share, has lost nearly all of its value and was trading at 9.9 pence. The stock was the largest percentage loser on the exchange.

Lebanon's worst bond market shock in a decade has raised doubts about whether the country's banks are willing and able to continue to bankroll the government, raising pressure on Beirut to step up reforms or risk a destabilising currency crisis, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. In September the cost of insuring Lebanese sovereign debt against default soared to its highest level since the global financial crisis of 2008, implying a more than 40 percent chance of default in the next five years.

Troubled Indian shadow bank Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd., whose recent debt defaults sparked concern about contagion in the nation’s financial markets, secured a lifeline after shareholders approved its plans to raise money through debt and equity, Bloomberg News reported. Stockholders green-lit IL&FS’s plans to raise as much as 150 billion rupees ($2.1 billion) through a non-convertible debt issue, hike the firm’s borrowing limit by 40 percent to 350 billion rupees and increase its share capital to enable a rights offering, the company said in a filing.

It took almost 16 years to build Abraaj Group into one of the most influential emerging-market investors and the Middle East’s biggest private equity dealmaker, Bloomberg News reported. The Dubai-based firm’s dramatic collapse took just four months. Suitors are now circling the company’s funds as liquidators seek to settle about $1 billion in debt. The problems for the buyout firm and its founder, Arif Naqvi, began in February with allegations that money in the company’s health fund had been misused.

Italy’s new populist leaders appear to be sticking to the program that brought them to power: In their budget plans, they’re charting a course that could ultimately put the entire European project at risk, a Bloomberg View reported. One can only hope that they will see reason. Since forming a government last spring, the coalition of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and right-wing League has kept everyone guessing about its genuine intentions. Its leaders made expensive promises to Italians, including big tax cuts, a lower retirement age, and even a basic income.

In July, Suyash Choudhary warned a liquidity crisis is looming in India and funding costs for companies were set to soar. Now, as investors get to grips with a cash crunch made worse by the debt crisis at a lender, Choudhary, the head of fixed-income funds at IDFC Asset Management Co., says the Reserve Bank of India may go slow in adding to the two rate increases since June, Bloomberg News reported. “Financial conditions have turned tight, and I think the RBI will have to pace incremental tightening at this juncture,” he said in an interview.

As investors scrambled for more clarity on the Italian budget plan that roiled its markets on Friday, at least one thing was clear: Ten years after the financial crisis, the sovereign-bank “doom loop” still haunts Europe, Bloomberg News reported. A selloff that started in government bonds quickly spread to the debt and shares of the country’s lenders as investors latched onto a problem policy makers have been unable to resolve in that decade -- the potentially vicious cycle between over-indebted governments and the weak banks that funded them.

Shareholders in Australia’s big banks shouldn’t get too comfortable. Bank stocks rallied in relief that the interim report from an inquiry into misconduct didn’t contain any specific recommendations. But criticism ran deep as Commissioner Kenneth Hayne lambasted the banks over their culture, conduct, compliance and remuneration practices, Bloomberg News reported. He also took aim at the securities and banking regulators for their timid approach and failure to take court action.

Embraer SA will have the right to block ten crucial matters in the commercial-aircraft joint venture it’s forming with Boeing Co, according to a Memorandum of Understanding between the two companies, Bloomberg News reported. The document was made available via the website of the Sao Jose dos Campos Metalworkers Union on Sept. 21 after the Labor Prosecutor’s Office requested a copy of the MoU under judicial confidentiality and made it public…Embraer’s American Depositary Receipts reversed earlier gains after the MoU was reported and were trading down 0.3 percent to $19.72 at 2:08 p.m.