Headlines

Italy has less than three months to raise the bulk of its remaining annual financing needs — amounting to about €63bn in fresh debt — as its bond sales programme lags behind those of other big eurozone sovereigns, the Financial Times reported. The nation, which has been hit by a series of sharp bond market sell-offs since late May, has secured less than three-quarters of its total planned 2018 debt sales to meet bond redemptions and its net increase in borrowing, according to a Financial Times analysis.

A deal with creditors has finally given Agrokor boss Fabris Perusko time to focus on leading the Croatian food group back from the brink of bankruptcy and fighting off international competition, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The former McKinsey & Company consultant was promoted in February from the board of Tisak, a chain of newsagents owned by Agrokor, to restructure the parent company. But the Croatian was promptly distracted by months of difficult talks with creditors.

Fines levied by China's banking regulator have surged since Guo Shuqing became its head in February 2017, rising nearly six-fold from the cumulative fines levied over the previous 14 years, UBS said in a report. The exponential increase in fines highlights a much stricter level of enforcement of regulations in the banking sector as Beijing seeks to fend off systematic financial risks, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Britain’s biggest payday lender Wonga Group collapsed on Thursday, putting its operations in the country into administration, Reuters reported. Privately owned Wonga, which initially enjoyed rapid growth via its short-term, high interest lending often to troubled borrowers, fell into difficulty in recent years after scrutiny of its practices led to a cap on interest on payday loans. “A decision has been taken to place Wonga Group Limited, WDFC UK Limited, Wonga Worldwide Limited and WDFC Services Limited into administration,” Wonga said in an email.

The lira crisis has faded from the headlines, but the Turkish government’s stopgap measures to halt the hemorrhaging will not fix what ails the economy, a Bloomberg View reported. There are other crises around the corner: Foreign capital flows financing the country’s massive current account deficit have dried up following the row between President Donald Trump and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the fate of Andrew Brunson, the American pastor jailed by Turkish authorities. The heavily indebted corporate sector, especially real-estate and construction companies, are hanging by a thread.

India’s banks have stepped up a drive to sell the assets of companies that can’t repay their debts. A deadline set by the central bank to restructure an estimated 3.6 trillion rupees ($51 billion) of stressed loans expired on Aug. 27, driving at least a dozen companies into bankruptcy proceedings, Bloomberg News reported. Many of the other indebted companies are finding buyers, adding to already record levels of mergers and acquisitions in Asia’s third-largest economy this year.

China’s six largest lenders, which control a combined $16 trillion of assets, mentioned the word almost 1,900 times in their first-half earnings announcements, up about 9 percent from the same period of 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Bank of China Ltd. said it achieved “new breakthroughs in risk mitigation,” while China Construction Bank Corp. touted its “stringent risk management,” Bloomberg News reported.

Argentina’s currency crisis deepened on Thursday as an emergency interest-rate increase to 60 percent failed to stop jittery investors from pulling their money out of the country, Bloomberg News reported. The peso extended losses after the bank raised its benchmark measure by 15 percentage points to a global high. The hike, the second this month, was the latest attempt by policy makers to defend a currency that’s lost more than half its value this year.

Investors demanded a hefty premium from Bank of Cyprus as it raised fresh capital this week, illustrating the continuing toll that heightened market volatility is taking on eurozone financials, the Financial Times reported. The Mediterranean lender is having to pay the highest coupon yet seen on a European contingent convertible bond, demonstrating the lengths that some of the continent’s weaker lenders will have to go to raise capital if market volatility continues.

Panasonic has cited the risk of Brexit upheaval for the decision to shift its European headquarters from the UK to the Netherlands in the autumn. The electronics company on Thursday justified its move by saying that Britain’s departure from the EU may result in changes to the transfer of labour, product, materials, services and data, as well as “potential fiscal obstacles by the application of different rules and regulations between the UK and EU,” the Financial Times reported.