Headlines

Jean-Charles Naouri, chief executive and controlling shareholder of French retailer Groupe Casino, is seen in Parisian circles as the ‘godfather of retail’. In the three decades since the 69-year-old mathematician, former French civil servant and Rothschild banker moved into the private sector, he has constructed a retail empire spanning Europe to Brazil.

Shareholders in Steinhoff on Wednesday sued Deloitte for damages in a Dutch court, accusing the auditor of failures in the accounting scandal that brought the South Africa-based global retailer to the brink of collapse, the Financial Times reported. VEB, the Dutch investor rights group, said it brought the lawsuit in the Rotterdam district court as Deloitte had “seriously failed in its statutory task as auditor” by giving an unqualified audit to Steinhoff before the owner of the UK’s Poundland and Mattress Firm in the US revealed a black hole of more than €5bn in its accounts.

A partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), who audited the accounts of collapsed department store chain BHS, has been fined 500,000 pounds ($668,000) and banned from audit work for 15 years and PwC has been fined 10 million pounds after a two-year inquiry in which they admitted misconduct, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) said on Tuesday. The fines would be reduced by 35 percent to 6.5 million pounds for the auditing firm and 325,000 pounds for Steve Denison for agreeing to an early settlement, the FRC said.

A creditor of Dubai-based Abraaj has started legal proceedings in the Cayman Islands seeking the restructuring of the private equity firm’s liabilities, Reuters reported. Auctus is the second creditor, after Kuwait’s Public Institution for Social Security (PIFSS), to start legal action in the Cayman Islands, where Abraaj Holdings is registered. In a statement to Reuters from its representatives, legal firm Kobre & Kim, Auctus Fund Ltd. said it has filed an application that seeks the appointment of “court-approved professionals in the Cayman Islands” to manage the restructuring process.

Who’s at fault for Videocon Industries Ltd.’s 39 billion rupees ($579 million) debt pile? The Indian maker of consumer appliances is casting the blame on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to ban cash, the nation’s top court and the Brazilian government, Bloomberg News reported. A bankruptcy court admitted an insolvency petition filed by creditors, led by State Bank of India against Videocon, and ordered debt reorganizers to take over its management. That prompted the company to file an appeal to wrest back control, according to an exchange filing on Tuesday.

As minister for financial services and insurance, Michael D’Arcy has been responsible for leading Ireland’s fintech charge for the past twelve months and two weeks, the Financial Times reported. “Not once” has he been asked about the financial crisis that pushed the country’s biggest banks, and the country itself, into a bailout less than a decade ago.

The gyrations in the Italian government bond market have revealed how Europe’s liquidity-starved sovereign debt markets are being heavily tested by even short bouts of political instability, the Financial Times reported. The rapid rise and fall in yields in the eurozone’s largest debt market in recent weeks has been exacerbated by thin sovereign debt liquidity.

Europe needs to create the conditions for banking consolidation before the continent can form true European banking champions, Deutsche Bank's chief said on Tuesday. Christian Sewing, the new CEO of Germany's largest bank, said that the German and European markets were too fragmented, with disparate rules on insolvency, consumer protection, and mortgage securities, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. "We don't have a single market," Sewing told politicians in Berlin.

Swiss mining giant Glencore PLC unveiled a sweeping $5.6 billion restructuring of its troubled Congo copper company, Katanga Mining Ltd., resolving a heated dispute with Congo’s state-run mining company about a massive debt load it has built up over the past decade, The Wall Street Journal reported. Glencore said Katanga Mining will issue $5.6 billion in stock, which it will use to retire debt. The company had been saddled with $9.2 billion in high-interest debt, most of which is owed to Glencore.

Beijing’s determination to tame China’s soaring debt levels has won plaudits from bullish observers who believe the government is finally tackling its key economic problem. Why, then, has there been so little stress in the country’s bond market? Defaults on Chinese bonds might appear to have risen sharply this year, in volume terms, The Wall Street Journal reported. A total of 13 issuers have defaulted on a combined 20.2 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) worth of corporate bonds in China’s domestic market in 2018, up 41% from the same period last year, when 11 issuers had defaulted.