Headlines

BT has attempted to draw a line under its worst performance since the turn of decade with a restructuring of its scandal-hit international arm, the loss of 4,000 jobs and a warning over the size of its dividend next year, the Financial Times reported. But with an alleged accounting fraud still being investigated in Italy and questions over future free cash flow amid tighter regulatory scrutiny, Gavin Patterson was forced to put on a brave face following the toughest period since he took over as chief executive in 2013. “Let me be clear: this has been a challenging year.

The naming of a new boss at Etihad Airways presents the Gulf carrier with an opportunity to rethink its aggressive expansion strategy after the failure of minority-owned Alitalia underlined the big barriers to global growth, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Ray Gammell was appointed interim CEO this week, days after Alitalia sought bankruptcy protection with $3.3 billion (£2.5 billion) of debt. He replaces veteran boss James Hogan.

Banks' "unconstrained" ability to generate credit by pledging the same assets as collateral multiple times needs to be curbed or risks creating a new financial bubble, the vice president of the European Central Bank said on Thursday. Vitor Constancio's remarks underscored the ECB's concerns about the prospect of a new boom in lending between financial firms at a time when its own ultra-easy monetary policy boosts banks' ability to extend credit and investors' appetite for risk, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

We do not yet know whether Emmanuel Macron’s win in the French election presages a normalisation of European politics, and of EU compromise and unity. But we can be pretty sure that it does presage an intensified debate on the normalisation of European monetary policy, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. On the question of when, the improvement in economic activity and uptick in headline inflation is prompting calls to pull the plug on monetary stimulus sooner. But core inflation, which excludes volatile energy and food prices, remains stuck at about 1 per cent.

Germany's SolarWorld, once Europe's biggest solar power equipment group, said on Wednesday it would file for insolvency, overwhelmed by Chinese rivals who had long been a thorn in the side of founder and CEO Frank Asbeck, once known as "the Sun King”, Reuters reported. SolarWorld was one of the few German solar power companies to survive a major crisis at the turn of the decade, caused by a glut in production of panels that led prices to fall and peers to collapse, including Q-Cells, Solon and Conergy.

Kenya Airways is about to conclude its capital restructuring, its chairman said on Wednesday, edging closer to putting past financial woes behind it, the carrier's chairman said, Reuters reported. The airline, part-owned by the state and AirFrance KLM, sank into the red four years ago after tourism slumped following a spate of attacks in Kenya by militants from the Somalia-based al Shabaab Islamist group. Last year the carrier had negative equity of 35 billion shillings ($339 million), Reuters data showed, and the business was sustained by shareholder loans.

PwC advised Property Ventures (PVL) on ways to continue trading when by some accounts it was insolvent while at the same time giving David Henderson's failed property development company a clean bill of health as statutory auditor, the liquidators allege, The New Zealand Herald reported. Liquidator Robert Walker alleges that if not for PwC, the company would have been wound up in 2007, allowing loans to be called in, asset sales and a more orderly liquidation. Instead it trundled on until 2010, when it failed owing $69 million and was later put into liquidation.

Ireland is home to the world’s fourth-largest “shadow banking” industry, with $2.2 trillion of nonbanking financial assets based in funds, special-purpose vehicles and other little-understood entities in Dublin’s IFSC, according to a report published on Tuesday, the Irish Times reported. The figure equates to almost eight times the size of the Irish economy, as measured by gross domestic product.

In a major setback for Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd (DCHL), public sector bank Canara Bank has filed an insolvency petition against the beleaguered city-based company before the Hyderabad bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) by invoking the provisions of the country's newly ushered in Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), the Economic Times reported.

The Brazilian government plans to change the bankruptcy law to help indebted firms emerge faster from creditor protection, Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles told a newspaper. The changes would reduce the average length of bankruptcy protection to two years, compared to between seven and eight years currently, he said in an interview published on Tuesday in the O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper.