Headlines

ArcelorMittal shares fell more than 2 percent on Tuesday after the world’s largest steelmaker said it had raised its offer for India’s Essar Steel , prompting concerns that it was overpaying, Reuters reported. ArcelorMittal is forming a joint venture with Japan’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp to bid for Essar in competition with bids from Russian lender VTB and Vedanta Resources. It said on Monday that it had submitted a revised proposal representing a “material increase” on its two previous offers.

China’s policy makers are stuck with the most bearish equity market in years as their attempts to lift sentiment fail to gain traction, Reuters reported. The Shanghai Composite Index slid Wednesday to within 10 points of its lowest intraday level since 2014, ignoring an article in the Securities Daily expressing support for the market and suggesting value investors should start buying. The benchmark made a brief upward foray mid-morning and then retreated. It was down 0.3 percent as of 11:05 a.m.

Australia’s Wiggins Island Coal Export Terminal obtained court approval on Tuesday for a $3.2 billion debt refinancing plan, offering respite to its owners who would have had to start repayments this month, Reuters reported. The Queensland-based terminal, known as WICET, is 40 percent owned by miner and commodities trader Glencore and was built to service a consortium of eight coal companies during a period of high commodity prices. It will now have the maturity of $2.6 billion in senior debt extended from this month until September 2026, court documents showed.

Second-round bids put in by Russia's VTB Group-backed Numetal Ltd, ArcelorMittal and Vedanta will be opened on Monday, people with direct knowledge of the development said. The Resolution Professional, overseeing the auction of Essar Steel to recover over Rs 49,000 crore of unpaid loans, sent emails to all the three bidders to be present on Monday for the opening of the second round of bids, they said. This follows an NCLAT judgement last week on the eligibility of bids.

Troubled Debenhams has called in advisers to help save the chain, and is considering its options which include store closures and insolvency, The Sun reported. The embattled department store chain is fighting to keep its 240 stores open following a sharp fall in profits and tumbling share prices as consumers turn to online shopping. After issuing three profit warnings this year, the chain had already announced plans to cut up to 90 jobs at its headquarters and 320 store management jobs.

Britain’s biggest labour union on Monday called for a criminal investigation into key individuals involved in the collapse of construction and outsourcing company Carillion. Carillion, which provided services in defence, education, health and transport, collapsed in January, becoming the largest construction bankruptcy in British history, Reuters reported. It left creditors and the firm’s pensioners facing steep losses and put thousands of jobs at risk. The Unite union launched legal action against Carillion in July on behalf of workers who were made redundant.

As a growing number of emerging markets teeter on the brink of crisis, we’re hearing more and more about “original sin.” No, this isn’t about Adam and Eve’s transgressions. The concept, coined by economists Barry Eichengreen and Ricardo Hausmann, refers to the inability of most nations — and their corporations — to borrow abroad in their own currency, a Bloomberg View reported. Instead, they necessarily borrow in other currencies. Turkey, for example, has accumulated significant debts denominated in dollars.

Europe’s biggest debt collector says an increase in volumes in Sweden and Norway could be an early indication that households are starting to struggle paying off their consumer loans after debt burdens swelled to records, Bloomberg News reported. Volumes under Intrum AB’s existing credit-management services contracts in the two countries, in which it collects money from non-paying clients of financial institutions, grew by more than 15 percent in the first half of the year.

Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers Co. will seek to prevent Arab National Bank and another lender from claiming assets of the Saudi Arabian company to settle outstanding loans, according to its acting chief executive officer. Algosaibi will oppose the move because the assets are meant to be frozen by a royal decree to ensure all creditors are treated fairly, Simon Charlton said in an interview in Dubai, without naming the second bank, Bloomberg News reported.

Deutsche Bank is set to lose as much as €200m in revenue a year unless chief executive Christian Sewing can reverse a recent surge in funding costs, the Financial Times reported. Executives have made reducing the cost of issuing debt a top priority after a chastening summer for the German lender, people familiar with their thinking said. The push comes after its credit rating was downgraded, its shares continued to tumble and the price of insuring its debt doubled on fears of contagion from political crises in Italy and Turkey.