Headlines

Rebel shareholders narrowly won a vote to oust the entire board of Ellaktor, Greece’s largest construction company, at Wednesday’s annual meeting in Athens, the Financial Times reported. According to the final count of proxy votes, 52.92 per cent of votes cast were in favour of a new nine-member board to be headed by Georgios Provopoulos, a former central bank governor, as chairman, while 47.08 per cent backed the current board led by Dimitris Koutras, a co-founder of Ellaktor and Leonidas Bobolas, head of the company’s construction concessions arm.

Banks from Britain must draw up plans showing how they will staff and operate their new bases in the European Union after Brexit to avoid ending up with "empty shells,” the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. It is the clearest sign yet that the shift in banking jobs from Britain may rise significantly from the modest 3,500 to 12,000 forecast in the short term by the City of London financial district. About 20 banks have applied so far for licences to open bases or expand existing ones in the eurozone by March 2019.

Insolvency and restructuring specialist Duff & Phelps has got permission to build almost 460 apartments on a site once controlled by bubble-era developer John Fleming, The Irish Times reported. An Bord Pleanála has given Duff & Phelps the go-ahead to build 459 dwellings in six five- to 14-storey blocks on Carmanhall Road in Sandyford in south Dublin. The site originally belonged to Tivway, the group led by developer Mr Fleming, which went into receivership with debts of about €1 billion in early 2010 following failed efforts to engineer a rescue.

Indian lenders struggling to recoup loans worth about $20 billion to troubled property developers have to contend with another challenge: A lackluster recovery from the worst home-sales slump this decade. To recover the dues, banks are taking control of land parcels and unfinished projects that can be sold along with loans, Bloomberg News reported. This comes at a time when home sales volumes have declined about 40 percent over four years and prices have dropped as much as 20 percent on average, said S.

Veteran fixed-income investor Abdul Kadir Hussain sees unsettling similarities between the 1997 Asian crisis and the present that spell trouble for emerging markets, Bloomberg News reported. Default rates on emerging-market debt will climb next year as the ending of a decade of easy money by central banks hits weaker companies the most, said Hussain, the head of fixed income at Arqaam Capital, a Dubai-based investment bank.

South Africa is getting down to the business of fixing its debt-ridden state power utility. Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. had 399 billion rand ($30 billion) of debt at the end of March, according to Bloomberg data, and has been flagged by ratings companies as a key risk to South Africa’s economy, Bloomberg News reported. The utility has been mired in a series of scandals, struggled to raise funds and was forced to implement rolling blackouts last month after wage talks with unions broke down.

Turkey’s banks are about to reveal the extent of the damage caused by the lira’s plunge and a surge in interest rates. As the country’s biggest lenders start reporting second-quarter results this week, investors will be scouring their balance sheets for clues into how they’re coping from a 22 percent slide in the currency this year that is knocking the ability of companies to repay their foreign debt, Bloomberg News reported. They’ll also be looking for signs on whether the highest borrowing costs in almost a decade have started to cool the economy.

Chinese financial markets are rediscovering an appetite for risk not seen in months, taking cues from the government’s biggest push yet to invigorate this year’s slowing economy, Bloomberg News reported. The CSI 300 Index of mainland stocks climbed 1.6 percent Tuesday, capping its biggest three-day gain since mid-August 2016, when economic indicators vindicated China’s moves to stabilize a slowdown back then. While there’s no guarantee of success this time, with the X-factor of a trade dispute with the U.S. at play, traders are betting big.

Ulster Bank is seeking regulatory approval to close a compensation scheme for small companies whose businesses were negatively affected by being put into a controversial restructuring unit during the financial crisis, The Irish Times reported. Sources said the bank is in contact with the Central Bank of Ireland about agreeing a deadline by which customers will have to make a complaint on their treatment by the lender’s now-defunct global restructuring group (GRG).

Holders of $500m defaulted Etihad-linked bonds learnt on a restructuring call on Tuesday that an auction aimed at saving the structured debt yielded a bid of just a fraction of their assets’ value, the Financial Times reported. The fate of $1.2bn bonds at the two special-purpose vehicles tied to Etihad has been in the balance since last summer, after the collapse of Italian airline Alitalia and Germany’s Air Berlin.