Headlines

Deutsche Bank has cut eight positions within its equities research team in Dubai as it moves to close the unit as part of a global scaling back of equities business, sources familiar with the matter said. The research analysts covered dozens of companies from Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Turkey, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Thousands of customers of failed British brokerage Beaufort are likely to get all their money back, regulators said on Tuesday. Beaufort, which specialized in helping raise money forsmall speculative mining companies, was declared insolvent in March after the U.S. Department of Justice alleged it had a role in a more than $50 million stock fraud and a laundering scheme involving a work by Pablo Picasso, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Lufthansa will not be investigated for market abuse over rising ticket prices following the collapse of local rival Air Berlin, the German cartel office said on Tuesday. The watchdog had received complaints over high ticket prices and had been looking into the matter with a view to decide whether to instigate a full investigation, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Air Berlin collapsed in October last year, leaving Lufthansa with a monopoly on some German domestic routes for a few months.

Czech financial firm J&T said on Friday it had struck a deal with Chinese state conglomerate CITIC Group to settle debts owed by troubled Chinese company CEFC, ending a dispute, Reuters reported. Privately-held CEFC has spearheaded a Chinese acquisition drive in the Czech Republic, championed by Czech President Milos Zeman, which includes a range of assets including engineering, brewing and real estate as well as a soccer club and an airline.

European Union finance ministers reached an agreement on Friday on reforming bank capital rules, a major step towards boosting the bloc’s financial stability and a stepping stone towards a deal on a backstop for its bank-rescue fund in June, Reuters reported. European Union finance ministers reached an agreement on Friday on reforming bank capital rules, a major step towards boosting the bloc’s financial stability and a stepping stone towards a deal on a backstop for its bank-rescue fund in June.

China Energy Reserve & Chemicals Group Co. said it hasn’t paid a $350 million bond that matured earlier this month, in the latest example of China’s deleveraging campaign choking off financing for some companies, Bloomberg News reported. The oil and gas producer, which has $1.8 billion of offshore notes outstanding, cited “tightening in credit conditions” for the default.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan finally conceded to his financial lieutenants’ currency-rescue plan, but a look back across recent eleventh-hour rate hikes in emerging markets shows it’s not enough to get the lira back on track, Bloomberg News reported. It took three years for Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina to reap rewards for her ultra-orthodox monetary policies, through an influx of investment and low volatility. Argentina saw immediate payoff for its extreme rate move this week -- of more than double Turkey’s 300 basis-points hike.

Chinese regulators are making progress in their attempts to tame the country’s $10 trillion shadow banking sector, but after a one-year squeeze on the riskiest areas of the industry, there’s still a lengthy battle ahead, Bloomberg News reported. "We’ve had a good beginning to a long journey," said Larry Hu, a Hong Kong-based economist at Macquarie Securities Ltd. "Some components of shadow banking are shrinking and interbank leverage has started to drop.

The Bank of Canada has highlighted elevated household debt and imbalances within the nation’s real estate market as the two chief vulnerabilities to the financial system in the event of a recession, Bloomberg News reported. But what could trigger such a downturn? Macquarie Capital Markets offers one simple answer: the housing market itself -- highlighting that the share of employment tied to construction as well as finance, insurance and real estate is nearly two standard deviations above its long-term average.

This year has been described as the “year of the CVA”. Barely six months in, it has become the year of the CVA backlash, the Financial Times reported. Company Voluntary Arrangements are agreements with creditors that aim to keep struggling businesses afloat. Recent high-profile cases have allowed retailers such as New Look, Carpetright and Mothercare to impose rent reductions on landlords and to break leases to close some stores altogether, in order to avoid insolvency. But landlords and rival retailers are unhappy with what some are coming to view as an abuse of legal process.