Headlines

Agrokor d.d., the conglomerate under the largest state-led restructuring in Croatian history, failed to report more than 3.9 billion kuna ($616 million) of liabilities at the end of 2015, according to a company report published on Monday. The firm released audited results for 2016 and reviewed financial reports for the previous years, confirming earlier warnings from Ante Ramljak, a government-appointed commissioner, that the original results may have contained irregularities, Bloomberg News reported.

Turkey’s markets took a hammering amid a deepening standoff between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government and the U.S. The lira, stocks and bonds tumbled, while the cost of insuring Turkish credit against a default rose after the two NATO members suspended visa services for each other’s citizens, Bloomberg News reported. The selloff underlined Turkey’s vulnerability as the prospect of U.S.

Noble Group Ltd., the commodity trader struggling to avoid a default, has set out why it received millions of dollars less from the sale of its North American gas and power unit than the company had previously indicated, responding to queries from the Singapore exchange, Bloomberg News reported. The figures differed because the unit’s working capital shrank, cutting the amount that needed to be paid by Mercuria Energy Group Ltd., Noble Group said in a statement on Monday. The illustrative sum given earlier by Noble Group also didn’t take into account funds that were placed in escrow, it said.

Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris said on Thursday he has put his interest in investing in Oi SA on hold because of infighting and a lack of decision-making at the debt-laden Brazilian mobile carrier. Sawiris would consider an investment via Orascom TMT Holdings SAE, the carrier he controls, should creditors and shareholders of Rio de Janeiro-based Oi settle their disputes, he told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Capri, Italy.

The European Commission is set to propose next week a watered-down plan to decrease risks in the banking sector in a bid to break a years-long stalemate as the main opponent to the project, Germany’s Wolfgang Schaeuble, prepares to quit. The plan tries to reduce bank risks after a decade-long economic crisis, and at the same time urges EU states to share those risks - an intent long opposed by Germany’s departing finance minister who feared wealthier German banks would end up propping up weaker rivals in other EU states, Reuters reported.

The recent decision by the People’s Bank of China to cut the effective reserve requirement ratio for banks by half a percent to 1.50 percent under certain circumstances fits with the government’s attempt to reduce leverage in the financial system, a Bloomberg View reported. And in many ways, it will lead to more efficiency and economic growth. There’s been speculation that the move contradicts the central bank’s deleveraging efforts and that this is yet another example of China pumping liquidity into the system to support growth.

Financial markets have swung their attention towards Spain after the Catalan regional government held a contested independence vote on Sunday, setting it on a collision course with Madrid, the Financial Times reported. Investors have been spooked by the possibility of Catalonia, a region with an economy roughly the size of Portugal, breaking away from Spain, risking a constitutional crisis and derailing its recovery from a severe recession. Madrid-listed shares are under pressure while yields on debt issued by the Spanish and Catalan regional governments have risen.

The eurozone’s fortunes have been transformed in the past couple of years. Growth has returned even to the most depressed corners of the bloc’s periphery. Investment is rebounding and unemployment, although still unacceptably high in some countries, is falling. The European Central Bank appears poised to scale back stimulus. All this has buoyed shares in European banks, which have outperformed their US rivals since the start of the year.

In a similar story, The Wall Street Journal reported that European regulators are turning up the heat on bad loans and Italy’s banks will feel it most. Tough timing then for Italy’s oldest bank, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, to return to the stock market this month after it was forced into a state-backed bailout process last December. Trading will be bumpy for its new shareholders, half of whom were bondholders before its recapitalization and will get their first chance to sell.

Sears Canada on Wednesday won court approval to extend credit protection by a month to Nov. 7, but its creditors set a deadline of this week to liquidate the retailers’ assets, leaving the company with mere days to decide its fate, Reuters reported. While the extension of creditor protection will keep its lenders at bay a bit longer, the new liquidation deadline means a deal with Executive Chairman Brandon Stranzl that would allow it to remain in business would still need to be reached by Saturday, Oct. 7.