Headlines

Investors’ next political test is the French election, but many are zeroing in on a different European risk for global markets: Italy. French bonds and shares sold off this week as investors focused again on the country’s presidential election, a two-round vote that begins on April 23 and has triggered concerns of a win for anti-euro candidate Marine Le Pen. Italian bonds also came under pressure and continued to weaken on Wednesday, even as French debt rallied, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Private equity firm Blackstone has reached an agreement in principle to hand over control of German outdoor brand Jack Wolfskin to a group of its lenders in a debt for equity swap, sources close to the situation said. Under the terms of a lender-led debt restructuring plan, lenders will write off €80 million and reduce Jack Wolfskin’s debt to €210 million from €330 million (178.44 million pounds) and inject €25 million into the business in return for ownership, one of the sources said.

Venezuela has put off a reckoning on its tens of billions of dollars in debt, but its ability to avoid a disastrous default will probably require much higher oil prices than appear likely in the next year or two, financial experts say. With its oil production and international reserves falling at an accelerating rate, the government is juggling as fast as it can to pay for imported food and medicines while meeting its short-term bond payments, the International New York Times reported.

Most bad loans held by Italian banks do not need to be sold immediately, the governor of the Bank of Italy said on Tuesday, in a bid to quell pressure on banks saddled with soured credit. In absolute terms, Italy is the EU country with the highest level of non-performing loans (NPLs) on bank balance sheets, data from the European Banking Authority (EBA) show, a burden that reduces their ability to lend to companies and households, Reuters reported.

South Korea’s National Pension Service has a decision to make -- help the world’s biggest shipmaker survive, or let it die. Creditors to Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. are due to meet next week to decide whether to convert some of the 1.55 trillion won ($1.4 billion) of bonds into equity to help the unprofitable company, Bloomberg News reported. Tipping the scale will be the decision of NPS, the biggest holder of debt that matures this month.

Weakening productivity did not start with the financial crisis, but has been the consequence of long-term business under-investment in change. Expressed as the dispersion of productivity levels, zombie companies dominate Britain’s sclerotic economy, the Financial Times reported. These businesses have enough income, or ability to borrow, to survive but are too weak to invest in transforming themselves. Whether the data show dispersion is up or down a bit over the past 20 years is trivial to the continuous impact in clogging up the whole economy.

The agreement reached by the eurozone finance ministers in Malta last week on the tax and pension measures to be enacted this year that will take effect in future years comes as a huge relief; without it, Greece won’t receive the next tranche of its €86bn bailout and won’t be able to repay €6bn of debt that comes due in July, a Financial Times letter reported. But you are also right that there remains a huge division between the country’s creditors that must be bridged.

Banks relocating to the eurozone as a result of Brexit will probably have to wait six months to secure a license, and the process could take up to a year, the European Central Bank said. The comments, from the eurozone’s top banking supervisor, underline the pressure on U.K.-based banks to move quickly ahead of Britain’s expected departure from the European Union by March 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a document published Tuesday to address banks’ Brexit-related queries, the ECB said it usually takes six months to decide whether to grant a banking license.

Toshiba Corp filed twice-delayed business results on Tuesday without an endorsement from its auditor and warned its very survival was in doubt, deepening a prolonged crisis at the Japanese conglomerate, Reuters reported. "There are material events and conditions that raise substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern," Toshiba said in announcing bigger than previously estimated losses for the nine months through December.

Croatia is struggling to contain the economic fallout from problems at heavily indebted food group Agrokor, the restructuring expert appointed by the government to lead the process said on Monday. Agrokor, the biggest employer in the Balkan region with some 60,000 staff, racked up debts during a rapid expansion, notably in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Serbia, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. According to the latest data from last September, its debts totalled around 45 billion kuna (5.16 billion pounds), or six times its equity.