Headlines

Europe’s economy has started 2018 in near-record-breaking fashion. That is clearly good news, but markets need to prepare for the inevitable pullback, The Wall Street Journal reported. It may not be right now, but it will have trouble getting much better. There were a string of remarkable figures in Wednesday’s flash eurozone purchasing managers index. The overall composite PMI came in at 58.6 for January, up from 58.1 in December, compiler IHS Markit said. It is yet another in a long run of economic surprises, beating expectations.

Seara Indústria e Comércio de Produtos Agropecuários, a Brazilian mid-sized grain trader that sought bankruptcy protection last year, on Monday filed its recovery plan in a local court, the company said on Tuesday. Seara Agro, based in the Paraná state and with no relations to a more well known poultry and pork processor also called Seara controlled by JBS SA, caused a management reshuffle at U.S. cooperative CHS Inc last year after defaulting on a $218 million debt with it, Reuters reported. The grain trader also has Bunge Ltd, Dutch bank Rabobank Groep and Credit Suisse among its creditors.

Former motor racing champion Niki Lauda has won the bidding for the Niki airline he founded, convincing the insolvent carrier’s administrators in marathon talks and undoing an agreed deal with British Airways owner IAG, Reuters reported. The previously agreed sale of Niki to IAG fell through after two courts ruled the insolvency proceedings had to move to Austria from Germany. That cleared the way for other parties such as budget airline Ryanair (RYA.I) and Lauda to again bid for the carrier, which most recently was part of failed German airline Air Berlin.

State Bank of India, the nation’s largest lender, sees provisioning for soured debt as the biggest challenge for the South Asian nation’s banking system even as credit growth is reviving from a three-decade low, Bloomberg News reported. “Whatever process we resort to for the resolution of non-performing assets there will be a gap in the provisioning,” Chairman Rajnish Kumar said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Haslinda Amin on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday. "That is precisely where the support from the government is required.

Strains are spreading in China’s $15 trillion shadow banking industry as investors pull back from the debt-like savings products that helped drive leverage to dangerous levels, Bloomberg News reported. Most affected are some $3.8 trillion of so-called trust products, until now the fastest-growing shadow banking segment and a popular way for debt-ridden property developers and local governments to raise funds from millions of ordinary Chinese.

Zimbabwe’s finance ministry is planning comprehensive reforms of all the nation’s state-owned companies, including liquidation, forming joint ventures and the outright sale of some businesses, Bloomberg News reported. The government will seek input through the ministries under which the respective state entities fall, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said in a statement handed to reporters in the capital, Harare, on Tuesday. Zimbabwe’s state-owned companies have long been a drain on the country’s finances, said Chinamasa.

EU finance ministers have pledged to revitalise a half-finished project to strengthen eurozone banks, saying the disagreements that stymied progress should be resolved by the summer, the Financial Times reported. At a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, the French and German finance ministers were among those stressing the need to unblock talks on the eurozone’s banking union to build momentum for other reforms to the currency bloc.

Noble Group Ltd. said it remains in talks with “potential strategic parties” after people familiar with the matter said a Chinese conglomerate had made an approach to shareholders amid attempts to restructure the troubled commodity trader’s $3.5 billion in debt, Bloomberg News reported. Cedar Holdings Group, the largest private company in Guangzhou province, has expressed interest in buying control of Noble Group, the people said, without giving any details of the approach and asking not to be identified because the information is confidential.

Few countries attract as much disdain from economists as Germany. Berlin is accused of running an excessively prudent budget and German companies of paying their workers too little: This stinginess -- so the accusation goes -- has contributed to global instability by making it harder for Germany’s euro-zone partners to climb their way out of the crisis, a Bloomberg View reported.

EU creditors are to start sensitive talks on how to structure possible debt relief for Greece as Athens eyes an exit from eight years of international bailouts this summer, the Financial Times reported. Eurozone finance ministers praised the Greek government’s latest reform attempts in a meeting in Brussels on Monday and are expected to sign off the country’s third bailout review formally once outstanding reform measures are completed in the coming weeks.