Headlines

Sears Canada’s liquidation sales, which began last week, have disappointed early bargain seekers, but steeper discounts expected further into Canada’s holiday shopping season are likely to squeeze rivals, analysts say. Sears Canada, which was spun off from Sears Holdings Corp. in 2012, is preparing to shut its doors in early 2018 after years of falling sales and sliding market share, Reuters reported. It won court approval this month to liquidate its assets after failing to secure a rescue deal.

Venezuela’s state oil company has a hefty payment due Friday and the lack of any signs or comments about the funds being transferred has the market in a late stage of panic, Bloomberg News reported. PDVSA’s dollar bonds tumbled more than four cents with yields on notes due 2020 jumping more than 2 percentage points to 17.3 percent. The probability of PDVSA defaulting on its debt over the next year has jumped to 79 percent with the odds over the next five years at 99 percent, according to credit default swap trading. Venezuela is already two weeks late on coupons for a slew of other bonds.

The rand and South African bonds extended declines as foreign investors dumped the country’s notes in the wake of government forecasts for higher public debt and wider budget deficits in the next three years, Bloomberg News reported. Stocks rose to a record as gains for rand hedges offset drops for banks and retailers. The nation’s currency extended its longest losing streak in a month, while the yield on benchmark 10-year notes rose to the highest in 16 months.

The European Central Bank confounded monetary hawks by extending its economic stimulus programme until at least September next year, pushing down the euro as investors digested Mario Draghi’s refusal to call the end to emergency crisis-era measures, the Financial Times reported. Although the ECB announced its stimulative bond purchases will be halved to €30bn a month, the commitment to keep the programme open-ended sent European shares higher as markets anticipated access to cheap money for longer.

The German parties exploring a possible coalition said on Thursday they wanted to discuss further the question of a euro zone budget -- an idea pushed by French President Emmanuel Macron, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. "German-French cooperation is of paramount importance to us," the three groups -- the conservatives, pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens -- said in a paper released during exploratory coalition talks.

Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. full-year earnings rose 18 percent on growth in its domestic banking businesses and lower bad debts, even as margins narrowed, Bloomberg News reported. Unaudited cash profit, which excludes one-time items, rose to A$6.94 billion ($5.3 billion) in the 12 months ended Sept. 30, from A$5.9 billion a year earlier, the Melbourne-based bank said in a statement Thursday. That compares with the A$6.97 billion median estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

The former chief executive officer of Venezuela’s state run-oil company said it will make debt payments this year and next, even as he acknowledged the crude producer is struggling with cash-flow and operational issues, Bloomberg News reported. The company has “all the resources to honor its liabilities,” Rafael Ramirez, who is now Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview in New York.

The European Central Bank is gearing up for its most important meeting of the year, as senior officials gather to decide the fate of the €2.1tn asset purchase scheme that many credit with breathing life into the eurozone recovery, the Financial Times reported. At issue is whether the ECB will declare this week that the economy has recovered sufficiently for quantitative easing to end next year — a pronouncement that would reverberate in foreign exchange markets and could shape interest rate expectations.

Monte dei Paschi di Siena shares soared on their market return after a 10-month hiatus, but remained well below the price Italy paid to bail out its fourth-largest bank, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The world's oldest bank's shares last traded in Milan in December 2016 when Monte dei Paschi had to turn to Rome for help after failing to find buyers for a 5 billion euro (£4.4 billion) share issue needed to keep it afloat.

Air Berlin is talking to both Britain's easyJet and Thomas Cook's German airline Condor about a sale of its remaining assets, a spokesman for the insolvent airline said on Wednesday, with the race tight, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. "We'll see who crosses the line first. It's neck and neck," he said, confirming a Reuters report from Tuesday.