Headlines

Force India mechanics were preparing their cars for the Belgian Grand Prix on Thursday despite lingering uncertainty about the Formula One team’s eligibility to race after a change of ownership, Reuters reported. The pink and white trucks and hospitality unit had no Force India branding, with the official team name appearing only over the garage on signs put up by Spa circuit organisers.

India’s Ambani brothers have completed the first part of a long pending multibillion-dollar telecom transaction, after months of uncertainty amid insolvency action against the stricken Reliance Communications, the Financial Times reported. RCom, controlled by Anil Ambani, said on Thursday that it had completed the sale of telecom infrastructure worth Rs20bn ($285m) to Reliance Jio, led by Mr Ambani’s older brother Mukesh.

The number of insolvencies in the first semester of this year got to the lowest level of the last ten years, but the amount of losses generated to creditors edges close to a 10-year record, Business Review reported. The number of large companies with a turnover over EUR 1 million becoming insolvent registered a growth of almost 5 percent, reaching 189 insolvent companies in the first semester of the current year. Increasing insolvency among large companies is a systemic problem as they spread greater financial and social shock in the already highly polarized business environment.

Losses for already hard-pressed Danish farmers are likely to be bigger than previously expected, an industry lobby group said on Wednesday, warning this could trigger more bankruptcies. Denmark, like many other countries in Europe, has been hit by one of the hottest summers on record, which has damaged crops and hit farmers’ income, Reuters reported. The drought, combined with low pork prices, is expected to trigger losses in the Danish agricultural sector not seen since the 2008 financial crisis.

After the acquisition of two financial institutions in Switzerland and Austria within just two months, the shopping spree of Liechtenstein’s largest listed bank may not have come to an end yet, Bloomberg News reported. "We are interested in further takeovers in Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Austria. We have around 400 million francs of surplus capital that we can use for mergers and acquisitions," Roland Matt, Group CEO of Liechtensteinische Landesbank AG (LLB), said in an interview with Bloomberg. He pointed out that acquisitions would have to strengthen existing activities of the bank.

One of the longest stalemates in Australian corporate history could be nearing a resolution. Vodafone Hutchison Australia Pty, the joint venture between Vodafone Plc and a unit of Victor Li’s CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd. that runs the nation’s third-largest mobile network, is in talks to merge with homegrown challenger TPG Telecom Ltd., the companies said in statements Wednesday.

Ireland’s banks have intensified a drive to offload soured loans from the financial crisis as regulators increase pressure on the sector to accelerate the repairing of balance sheets still burdened by bad lending practices before the crash, the Financial Times reported. Under the scrutiny of the European Central Bank and domestic authorities, Irish lenders have recently sold non-performing loans with a gross value of about €6.5bn to US investment vehicles owned by Cerberus, Goldman Sachs and Lone Star Funds.

The exodus of foreign investors from Italy’s bond market is gathering pace, with net sales of the country’s sovereign debt climbing to a record level for the second month in a row, the Financial Times reported. Holdings of Italian debt by foreign investors declined by a net €38bn in June, according to recently released figures from the European Central Bank, eclipsing the previous month’s net fall of €34bn, which was itself a record.

Venezuela’s epic 95 percent currency devaluation was in part an attempt, it appeared, to squash the black market where most people have bought and sold dollars for years, Bloomberg News reported. Those illusions were dashed quickly, though. Within hours of the financial system re-opening this week, black market quotes for the bolivar were already flying around. Some quoted it at 65 bolivars per dollar. Others had it as high as 100 bolivars -- well above the new, official exchange rate of 60 per dollar that President Nicolas Maduro set Friday night.

Turkey’s financial trouble has claimed some distant victims: small investors in Japan, who have dabbled in emerging-market assets to escape superlow domestic returns, The Wall Street Journal reported. The upset illustrates the appetite for risk among an army of punters often dubbed “Mrs. Watanabe,” after the stereotypical Japanese homemaker. Last year, Deutsche Bank researchers said these buyers had fueled a rally in bitcoin and made up half of global foreign-exchange trading using borrowed money.