Headlines

Shares in Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering shed close to two thirds of their value on Monday as the world’s second-largest shipbuilder traded for the first time in 15 months, the Financial Times reported. The stock dropped as much as 64.9 per cent from its closing level of Won44,800 on July 14, 2016, before pulling back slightly to be down 57.5 per cent at Won19,050.

Prices in Germany unexpectedly slipped this month, highlighting the challenges facing the European Central Bank as it attempts to roll back monetary stimulus without reversing the recent uptick in inflation, the Financial Times reported. Consumer prices fell an average of 0.1 per cent over the month, compared to expectations that they would stay steady. The monthly decline brought the year on year inflation rate down from 1.8 per cent to 1.5 per cent, confirming earlier state-level readings that had suggested a pullback.

Russia risks having to bail out more banks owned by large industrial groups unless there is rapid consolidation, VTB First Deputy Chief Executive Yuri Solovyov said. Two of Russia's biggest banks, Otkritie and B&N, have had to be taken over by the central bank in the past two months after a liquidity squeeze, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Such "pocket banks", a post-Soviet phenomenon which involved industrial groups needing their own banking wings to finance business, are still common in Russia, but some are struggling.

EasyJet has strengthened its position in Germany by agreeing to buy part of Air Berlin’s operations at Berlin Tegel airport, ending uncertainty over the fate of the failed airline’s remaining assets, Reuters reported. EasyJet said late on Friday it would enter into leases for up to 25 A320 aircraft, acquire take-off and landing slots, and offer jobs to staff, making the announcement shortly after Air Berlin’s final flight landed at Tegel.

The two largest groups of Oi SA bondholders have agreed to inject more cash into a proposed restructuring of the Brazilian telecom’s debt, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday, in the latest twist in Latin America’s biggest-ever bankruptcy, Reuters reported.

The number of people registering as insolvent in England and Wales hit a five-year high in the third quarter, according to figures on Friday that hinted at trouble brewing in Britain’s consumer economy, Reuters reported. The government’s Insolvency Service said 27,807 people in England and Wales registered as insolvent between July and September, up from 22,389 in the three months to June and marking the biggest total since the third quarter of 2012. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the figure was just short of a three-year high struck in the first quarter of 2017.

Venezuela’s state-run oil company said it transferred the funds to make an $842 million principal payment on its bonds due Friday, overcoming the first of many hurdles the country will face in coming days as it seeks to avoid sinking into default, Bloomberg News reported. The announcement spread a sense of relief to investors in the bond market, who drove up Venezuelan asset prices across the board Friday. A second big payment is due Nov. 2, and the country’s decision to disburse the cash for today’s payment indicates that it likely intends to meet that one too.

It used to be that when America sneezed, the world caught a cold. This time around, it’s the risk of a sickly China that poses a bigger threat. The world’s second-largest economy is now trying to ward off the sniffles. While output is still growing at a pace that sees gross domestic product double every decade, the problem remains that much of that has been fueled by a massive buildup of credit, Bloomberg News reported.

The 6,000 job cuts announced last week at Nordea Bank AB are just a down payment for an industry facing radical overhaul, says Chief Executive Officer Casper von Koskull. “If somebody says, where are we, or where are banks, 10 years from now, banks could easily have half what they have today,” in terms of personnel, von Koskull said in an interview in London on Friday. Nordea last week stunned unions, analysts and investors when it revealed the staff reductions, which amount to well over a tenth of the work force of the Swedish bank, Bloomberg News reported.

The risk of a government intervention in bankrupt telephone group Oi SA has subsided after shareholders gave assurances they would not change its current managers, Brazil’s telecoms regulator Anatel said on Thursday. “Intervention is no longer imminent,” Anatel chief Juarez Quadros told reporters. He said shareholders had sent the company emails assuring its managers that “at no time” had they or the board of director considered replacing them, Reuters reported. Brazil’s Solicitor General Grace Mendonça also said intervention of the debt-laden carrier was the last thing it had in mind.