Headlines

The UK is one of the only major markets where house prices are unlikely to grow in 2018, according to new forecasts from Fitch Ratings, the Financial Times reported. The ratings agency’s annual housing and mortgage outlook predicted average prices in the UK will be flat this year, with declines in London and the South East due to “Brexit uncertainty, stretched affordabliity and low income growth”. The only housing markets assessed by Fitch with a worse outlook for 2018 were Greece, where it predicted a 2 per cent decline, and Norway, where prices could drop 5 per cent.

The European Union, faced with forces of disintegration, is mostly holding its ground. This year will test whether it can also advance. The bloc and its political establishment have had to prove their resilience repeatedly over the past decade, in the face of challenges ranging from financial calamity to populism, The Wall Street Journal reported. Fixing underlying problems, however, is proving more difficult than merely surviving.

A company connected to an advisory firm to the family of businessman Sean Quinn is allegedly behind the “cash extraction” of some $15 million (€12.26 million) from an Indian company in a number of bogus transactions, it has been claimed at the Commercial Court, the Irish Times reported. The alleged extraction is part of a scheme designed to put $455 million in Quinn group assets beyond the reach of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), it is claimed.

Australia’s largest sandalwood forest company, Quintis Ltd, has called in administrators after one of its bondholders forced the firm to pay out A$37 million ($30 million), a spokesman for the administrators, KordaMentha, said on Monday. Quintis has been trying to raise new financing over the past nine months, but none of the recapitalisation strategies, including a buyout by the company’s former managing director, have reached completion, Reuters reported. Bondholder Asia Pacific Investments DAC, connected with U.S.

South Africa appointed a new board at struggling utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., with Jabu Mabuza becoming chairman, and ordered a new permanent chief executive officer to be named within three months. As well as the appointment of Telkom SA SOC Ltd. Chairman Mabuza, the government recommended former Land Bank chief Phakamani Hadebe as the acting CEO, it said in a statement. The move, designed to strengthen governance and management, follows a meeting between President Jacob Zuma and other key ministers on Friday to address urgent challenges at the firm, Bloomberg News reported.

The design for a new class of safe financial assets intended to strengthen the euro area will be published imminently after almost a year of delay, according to officials familiar with the matter. The report, commissioned by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, will offer a plan for bundling government debt from the bloc’s 19 nations into a security that could withstand default by one or more countries without sparking contagion, Bloomberg News reported. The European Safe Bond initiative started in September 2016 as a way to avoid a repeat of the region’s sovereign debt crisis.

Private equity groups and distressed buyout firms are circling collapsed British construction company Carillion to cherry-pick assets from one of the UK’s most politically sensitive corporate failures, the Financial Times reported. The interest from private investors — including the Canadian fund manager Brookfield and British private equity group Endless, which specialises in turnrounds — comes as the government struggles to protect thousands of jobs left at risk by Carillion’s liquidation.

Air France-KLM has held talks with Alitalia about entering the race to acquire the ailing Italian flag carrier, a decade after its efforts to purchase its peer were scuppered by political opposition, the Financial Times reported. According to people familiar with the matter, Alitalia’s government-appointed commissioners met AF-KLM executives in Paris last week to discuss the Franco-Dutch airline’s interest in joining the auction, possibly through a joint bid with easyJet, the British low-cost carrier. AF-KLM’s arrival on the scene marks a new twist in the long-running saga s

Eurozone finance ministers were set to hail Greece’s recent steps to improve its public finances on Monday — but also to hold off on giving Athens a full bill of health it seeks as it prepares to return to financial markets, the Financial Times reported. In Mário Centeno’s first meeting as president of the eurogroup, the finance ministers will confirm that Athens has adopted the vast majority of 113 economic reforms the country needs to take under this phase of its €86bn bailout.

Five UK banks are facing heavy losses on loans to Carillion, after irreconcilable differences between the company, its lenders and the government pushed the UK construction and services group into liquidation on Monday, sources said. Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), HSBC, Santander, Lloyds and Barclays are among the most heavily exposed after providing £140m of emergency loans in September 2017 and are also lenders on a £790m revolving credit facility, Reuters reported.