Headlines

Hyundai Merchant Marine Co., South Korea’s biggest sea carrier, said it will post losses through the first half of 2018 as the container-shipping industry attempts to recover from Hanjin Shipping Co.’s bankruptcy and years of excess capacity, Bloomberg News reported. As a hedge against adverse conditions plaguing shipping, Hyundai Merchant has initiated talks to invest in box terminals in Southeast Asia, Chief Executive Officer Yoo Chang-keun, 64, said in an interview Monday.

The Reserve Bank of Australia frequently seeks feedback on the health of the economy. It might want to call the debt counselors soon. Homeowners, consumers and property investors around Australia are making more calls to financial helplines as three warning signs back up the spike in demand: mortgage arrears are creeping up, lenders’ bad debt provisions have increased and personal insolvencies are near an all-time high, Bloomberg News reported.

A split between the euro area and the International Monetary Fund over Greece’s bailout deepened on Tuesday as one of Europe’s most senior policymakers and the country’s finance minister criticised the fund for being overly pessimistic about the country’s prospects. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the eurogroup of finance ministers, said in an interview with the Netherlands’ RTLZ that a bleak IMF report on Greece released on Tuesday represented an “outdated” view of the Greek economy and “must be honest” in its assessments, the Financial Times reported.

Remaining in the eurozone is France’s best protection over the long term, the country’s central bank governor said Tuesday, firmly pushing back against nationalist political sentiment that threatens to yank his country out of the 19-country currency bloc and upend nearly 70 years of European integration, The Wall Street Journal reported. François Villeroy de Galhau said that differences in borrowing costs, or the spread, between France and Germany have narrowed sharply since the introduction of the euro.

Political risk is on the rise in Europe and bonds have been selling off, The Wall Street Journal reported. But that hasn’t stopped investors from snapping up ultralong-dated debt—a trend that emerged in 2016 when investors were more concerned with hunting for returns than shielding themselves from losses. Belgium on Tuesday became the latest eurozone country to sell long-dated bonds, including one slug of debt that doesn’t come due until 2057.

Differences among Bank of England officials about the outlook for interest rates moved into sharper focus on Tuesday, as one of them said rates might need to rise soon if the growth remains solid and inflation continues to accelerate. Last week the central bank signalled it was in no rush to hike rates, with BoE Governor Mark Carney stressing that Britain's economy would face "twists and turns" during its departure from the European Union.

Investors in Takata have begun to price in the growing risk of a court-led bankruptcy after Chinese-owned Key Safety Systems emerged as the leading bidder for the Japanese automotive supplier mired in a global recall crisis over exploding airbags, the Financial Times reported. In a statement, Takata said a steering committee of outside experts, commissioned by the company, had recommended KSS, a US airbag manufacturer owned by China’s Ningbo Joyson Electronic, as the preferred financial sponsor, although a final decision has yet to be made.

Greek government bonds are a relative sea of calm on Monday after last week’s “violent” moves, as officials in the International Monetary Fund prepare to discuss their participation in the country’s €86bn bailout later today. After renewed market jitters over Athens’ bailout compliance, Greece’s 10-year bond yields have fallen back from two-month highs this afternoon to around 7.4 per cent, the Financial Times reported. The sell-off has eased as the IMF’s executive board will meet to discuss their involvement in Greece’s three-year rescue agreed in the summer of 2015.

In a related story, The Wall Street Journal reported that Greece is struggling under its austerity regime and new questions are mounting as to whether it can satisfy its bailout terms. Some people in high places know just whom to blame—a statistician in rural Maryland. Before Greece’s debt crisis, its governments manipulated statistics and masked the size of budget deficits, waste and patronage. The statistician, Andreas Georgiou, moved from the U.S. to become Greece’s first independent head of statistics in 2010.

The pace of consolidation in the crisis-hit shipping industry accelerated on Monday after three of Norway's biggest offshore oil industry service vessel (OSV) operators announced plans to merge to create one of the biggest fleets in the sector, Reuters reported. Shipping tycoon John Fredriksen and Norwegian billionaire Kjell Inge Roekke said they had agreed a restructuring plan for Farstad Shipping, via a debt-for-equity swap and additional share issue, solving long-running efforts to address liabilities worth 12.6 billion crowns ($1.53 billion) at end-September.