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Aurelius Equity Opportunities shares plunged for a second day after executive rebuttals of Tuesday’s allegations from short seller Gotham City Research failed to soothe wary investors, Bloomberg News reported. Aurelius tumbled a record 35 percent to 35 euros in Frankfurt trading. The plunge follows a 17 percent decline yesterday after Gotham published a 68-page report questioning the company’s accounting. The stock is worth no more than 8.50 euros, the short seller said yesterday.

The headlines might have been fixated on the formal start of the UK’s exit from the EU but there was perhaps greater interest among market participants in a media report that claimed the European Central Bank’s policy intentions had been misinterpreted, the Financial Times reported. The report, carried by the Reuters newswire and citing ECB sources, said the central bank was now wary of making further changes to its policy message next month.

The Centre is confident that the newly established institutional framework to implement the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) will help improve the country’s ranking in the World Bank’s ease of doing business index, The Hindu BusinessLine reported. “Yes, it is going to help us improve our ranking in ease of doing business,” Arjun Ram Meghwal, Minister of State for Finance, told BusinessLine here. As a regulator for overseeing insolvency proceedings and insolvency related entities, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) was established in October 2016.

International offshore driller Ocean RIG UDW Inc filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in a U.S. court late Monday, hit by cancellations as major oil producing customers withdrew from deep water projects amid falling oil prices, Reuters reported. The Cayman Islands holding company, which spent heavily on new drill ships earlier in the decade, said lower oil prices will continue to weigh on client demand during 2017. More than half of its drilling units are currently inactive. In a filing with the U.S.

The European Central Bank improperly veered into political activity during the eurozone crisis and should withdraw from the “troika” of international bailout monitors, according to anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International. In a review of the central bank’s actions, carried out in co-operation with ECB officials, the report called on the ECB to be placed under greater scrutiny by EU institutions, saying its mandate to ensure price stability in the eurozone had been pushed to “breaking point” in tackling the crisis, the Financial Times reported.

Banks are treading carefully, enacting two-stage contingency plans, to avoid losing nervous London-based staff as they work out how many jobs will have to move to continental Europe as Britain exits the European Union, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. British Prime Minister Theresa May will trigger formal EU divorce proceedings on Wednesday, launching two years of negotiations that will shape the future of Britain and Europe as well as London's place as a global financial centre.

Italy's Banca Popolare di Vicenza posted a 1.9 billion euro (1.60 billion pounds) loss for 2016 and said it was bleeding deposits, raising doubts over whether regulators will deem the regional bank viable and approve its request for state aid. Popolare di Vicenza and local peer Veneto Banca this month asked the Italian government for a bailout, following in the steps of Italy's fourth-largest lender Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

China’s economy held steady in the first quarter, though the momentum, fueled by government-directed spending and low-cost funding, may be tough to sustain, according to a private quarterly survey, The Wall Street Journal reported. The stimulus-fueled engines that powered the Chinese economy in the second half of last year and early this year, including real estate and commodities, are increasingly wobbly and are adding to already high debt-levels, China Beige Book International said in its latest survey.

The Nova Scotia Supreme Court has granted a La Havre company an extension for filing its proposal for bankruptcy — with conditions. Kocken Energy Systems Inc. was given the full 45 days to file its proposal, the maximum allowed under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, The Chronicle Herald reported. Kocken manufactures process equipment for the oil and gas industry. In 2011, the two shareholders, William Famulak and Arthur Sager, moved manufacturing from Alberta to La Have. In 2015, Kocken acquired a plant at St. Antoine, N.B.

Nigeria's state-owned AMCON has recovered 681.5 billion naira ($2.2 bln) over the past six years from debtors in the form of cash, properties and shares, it said on Monday. The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) was set up in 2010 to absorb banking sector-wide non-performing loans in exchange for government bonds, after the central bank rescued nine weak lenders from collapse in 2009, Reuters reported. Read more.