Headlines

August may yet prove a sleepy month for the Italian bond market, but the last week has been a reminder not to take a summer lull for granted, the Financial Times reported. A renewed sell-off gripped the €2tn market late last week as the country’s populist Eurosceptic coalition government began negotiations on its debut budget, something the market had not expected until the autumn.

Indian tycoon Neeraj Singal has been arrested for allegedly siphoning off funds from Bhushan Steel, one of the biggest companies targeted under the country’s new bankruptcy act, the Financial Times reported. India’s Serious Fraud Investigation Office said late on Thursday that the businessman had been put in custody connected with “serious corporate fraud”. Mr Singal could not immediately be reached for comment.

Greece has lived through eight lost years. Since 2010, its economy has shrunk by one-quarter, the disposable income of its citizens by-one third. More than 300,000 of those people have emigrated; among those left, unemployment is at 20 per cent. As the country prepares to draw a line under this grim period, with the international tutelage imposed after its bailout set formally to end on August 20, the question is whether the years of trauma will have acted as a purge — cleansing Greece of some of the problems that contributed to the crisis, the Financial Times reported.

Hilco Capital, the new owner of British home improvement retailer Homebase, will next week detail plans to close around a quarter of its stores, threatening over 1,000 jobs, according to a Sky News report. Sky News said Hilco, which acquired Homebase from Australian group Wesfarmers for a nominal 1 pound in May, was expected to outline proposals for a so called Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) restructuring that would close roughly 60 of Homebase’s 249 stores, Reuters reported.

The Share Centre Ltd (TSC) will become the principal nominated broker for the transfer of client money and assets of part of collapsed broker Beaufort, administrators PwC said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. PwC are also in discussion with a second nominated broker for those clients previously managed by Beaufort Asset Clearing Services’ Welsh office in Colwyn Bay, it said in a statement. Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority placed Beaufort, a leading adviser to companies listed on London’s junior market, into insolvency in March. The U.S.

The longer Turkish policy makers wait to stem the lira’s precipitous slide, the bigger the toll on the already fragile economy, Bloomberg News reported. The cost of insuring the nation’s debt against default climbed to a nine-year high as an almost 30 percent plunge in the exchange rate in 2018 threatens the finances of local firms that have gorged on foreign-currency loans. Turkish companies have foreign-exchange liabilities equal to about a third of the country’s gross domestic product, posing a serious threat to banks if the currency depreciation isn’t contained.

Sterling’s weakness is pushing the UK currency into “rarefied territory” against the euro, according to one analyst, as investors’ anxiety over a hard Brexit increases, the Financial Times reported. A further decline on Wednesday pushed the pound beyond the 90p level against the euro for the first time since October, when traders were becoming enthused at the prospect of the European Central Bank unwinding its stimulus. The value of the pound against the euro is typically seen as a good barometer of the unfolding Brexit negotiations, which are yet to produce a deal.

Spanish industrial production increased slower than expected in June, fuelling concerns that the rebound in one of the eurozone’s major economies is losing momentum, the Financial Times reported. Year-on-year the rate of industrial production in Spain rose 0.5 per cent, significantly slower than the 1.9 per cent rise forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll and below the 1.6 per cent rise recorded in May, according to data from the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica. The fall was driven by a 8.3 per cent fall in energy production, and continued the downward trajectory seen since March.

Insurer Prudential is unlikely to split into two before late 2019, it said on Wednesday as growth in Asia helped it beat first-half profit forecasts, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Britain's largest listed insurer said in March it planned to demerge M&G Prudential, its UK and Europe life insurance and asset management business, into a separate business with a London listing. The remaining Prudential business will focus on Asia and the United States.

Italian households suffered a much larger loss of income than their German counterparts due to the European Central Bank’s ultralow interest rates, according to an ECB report that appears to dispel some German concerns over the bank’s easy-money policies, The Wall Street Journal reported. German officials have frequently criticized the ECB for hurting the nation’s savers and subsidizing highly-indebted households in southern Europe by introducing low interest rates.