Headlines

France‘s top central banker has said the European Central Bank cannot step in to offset slower growth or market turmoil should a serious trade war materialise or governments overspend, the Financial Times reported. François Villeroy de Galhau, governor of Banque de France, also “strongly“ welcomed the commitment made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s president Emmanuel Macron earlier this week to reform the eurozone economy through more economic integration.  The ECB announced last Thursday that it planned to end its €2.4tn quantitative easing programme by the

Dubai-based Abraaj Group agreed to sell its Latin America, Sub Saharan Africa, North Africa and Turkey Funds management business to U.S. investment management firm Colony Capital Inc, the companies said on Thursday. The agreement comes after months of turmoil at Abraaj in the wake of its dispute with four of its investors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and International Finance Corp (IFC), over the use of their money in a $1 billion healthcare fund, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The group has denied it misused the funds.

South African construction firm Basil Read Holdings said on Wednesday it had applied to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange for the voluntary suspension of the listing of its shares after a key unit started business rescue proceedings, Reuters reported. The cash-strapped company announced on Friday that Basil Read Limited, its wholly owned subsidiary which houses its construction unit, had started business rescue proceedings after it failed to secure bridge funding from lenders. Its shares have plunged more than 90 percent from a high of 22 cents to close at 1 cents on Friday.

European Union banks should reduce the stock of bad loans to a maximum of 5 percent of the loans they hold, Germany and France said in a joint document, recommending a ceiling that would force Italy and other EU countries to hasten offloading plans, Reuters reported. The document, adopted before an EU summit scheduled for next week in Brussels, said that all European banks should aim at reducing their gross exposure to non-performing loans (NPLs) to a maximum ratio of 5 percent.

Billionaire banker Uday Kotak’s stressed asset investment unit is asking India’s bankruptcy regulator to ensure that potential buyers of insolvent companies aren’t made to provide non-refundable deposits in exchange for financial information during the sale process, Bloomberg News reported. A court-appointed insolvency professional asked bidders for Golden Jubilee Hotels Ltd., which operates a property that in November hosted Ivanka Trump, to pay an upfront deposit of 1 million rupees ($15,000) while submitting an expression of interest, according to S.

Declines in Chinese stocks and the yuan came to a halt as the government stepped up efforts to limit trade tension fallout, Bloomberg News reported. The Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.3 percent on Wednesday, erasing an earlier loss of 1.2 percent, after plummeting almost 4 percent on Tuesday as investors unwound leveraged positions. The yuan snapped its steepest two-day loss since 2015 after policymakers set the daily fixing at a much stronger level than expected.

Altice Europe is selling its French and Portuguese tower businesses for a total of €2.5bn in cash, the telecoms and cable group said on Wednesday after market close, the Financial Times reported. The deal marks the latest asset disposal by Patrick Drahi’s Altice as the company moves to free up its balance sheet and reassure investors concerned about its debt pile and operational difficulties in its largest market of France. Earlier this month Altice spun off its US division from the European business as part of a restructuring that was announced in January.

Soon after succeeding his brother at the helm of Indian construction group Lanco, L Madhusudhan Rao spotted an opportunity that looked too good to miss. India’s 2003 Electricity Act was a landmark in the liberalising reform drive that began a decade before, turbocharging the coal-fired power sector by abolishing a burdensome licensing regime, the Financial Times reported. Mr Rao’s Lanco was quick to take advantage. Over the next few years, it borrowed heavily to set up a string of power plants scattered across the nation. Lanco was far from alone.

Non-performing loans held by Portuguese banks are declining at a substantial rate as the economy expands but remain “very high” by European standards, Moody’s said on Wednesday. The rating agency said the ratio of NPLs to gross lending fell to 15.2 per cent at the end of 2017, down from 19.5 per cent a year earlier, the Financial Times reported. The ratio had peaked at 20.1 per cent in 2016 in the wake of the eurozone debt crisis, which forced Portugal to seek an international bailout.

The Italian economy has significant problems — notably feeble productivity growth and a competitiveness handicap, particularly vis a vis Germany. These, writes Martin Wolf in his latest column, are domestic shortcomings, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. However, Martin argues that Italy’s membership of the eurozone makes them common concerns. What can be done? In the absence of sustained fiscal transfers between member states of the eurozone, the burden of adjustment will fall on Italy itself.