Headlines

China’s banking regulator, which has asked local lenders to provide loan information on the country’s top deal-making companies, is examining examples of acquisitions gone awry by those firms to assess potential risks to the financial sector, people familiar with the matter said.

European central bankers learnt this week that any move towards normality in monetary policy will require meticulous communication amid jittery financial markets that have long gorged on the abundance of extremely cheap money, the Financial Times reported. At a European Central Bank forum in Sintra, Portugal on Tuesday, Mario Draghi appeared to misjudge the mood. The ECB president gave a speech that suggested — at least to skittish investors — a hawkish policy shift compared with his words at the central bank’s last policy meeting on June 8. The ECB spent Wednesday explaining itself.

Net foreign assets at Saudi Arabia's central bank, a measure of its ability to support its currency, look set to fall sharply this year as oil prices slump and Riyadh expands its sovereign wealth fund to invest abroad, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. They shrank from a record high of $737 billion (578.36 billion pounds) in August 2014 to $529 billion at the end of 2016 as the government liquidated some assets to cover the huge budget deficit caused by the fall in oil prices.

A year into its bankruptcy saga, Oi SA is reinforcing to the rest of the world that Brazil is a hazardous place even for the most experienced of investors. In the two decades since the telecom giant was privatized, it’s been strong-armed into disastrous acquisitions and turned into a dumping ground for the debt of its controlling shareholders, Bloomberg News reported. It was used by Brazil’s government to push political policies and was saddled with regulations that drained it of cash.

The European Commission's decision to let Italy spend up to 17 billion euros ($19 billion) to clean up the mess left by two failed banks is bad news -- and not just for Italy's taxpayers. It's also a setback for the euro zone's putative banking union, and for the European Union's efforts to supervise anti-competitive state aid, a Bloomberg View reported. Over the weekend, the Italian government wound down Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca, two regional lenders struggling under the weight of non-performing loans.

Noble Group Ltd. shares slid Tuesday on the first day of trading after Fitch Ratings cut the embattled commodities trader’s credit rating to a score indicating that a default is possible, Bloomberg News reported. The company’s stock dropped 2.8 percent as of 3:04 p.m. in Singapore after a public holiday Monday. It earlier fell as much as 7.6 percent. Fitch slashed its rating late Friday by two steps to CCC, its third downgrade since the middle of last month.

Japanese auto parts maker Takata Corp expressed condolences on Tuesday to victims of its faulty air bags linked to at least 16 deaths and 180 injuries around the world, but stopped short of offering a full apology, Reuters reported. "We offer our condolences to the those who lost their lives and to those who suffered injuries," Shigehisa Takada, chairman and CEO of Takata, said at the company's last annual shareholder meeting as a listed company.

The Bank of England published its twice-yearly assessment of UK financial stability on Tuesday. It judges that the UK financial system is more resilient than it was but is concerned that consumer credit is growing too fast and has ordered banks to put more money aside in case the market turns, the Financial Times reported. The bank’s Financial Policy Committee has warned that there are still “pockets of risk that warrant vigilance” in the UK financial system but reduced its overall warning level from “elevated” to “standard”.

The euro has leapt to its strongest point of the day after European Central Bank president Mario Draghi signalled growing confidence in the eurozone recovery and rising inflation, the Financial Times reported. “The threat of deflation is gone and reflationary forces are at play,” he said in a speech in Sintra. The bullish assessment will fuel speculation that monetary policymakers could soon begin discussing a withdrawal of monetary stimulus. The ECB president said all the evidence suggested the central bank was managing to raise demand.

The head of Italy's BIM said on Monday he was confident the private banking group would be sold on the market quickly following the decision to liquidate its main shareholder Veneto Banca, Reuters reported. "We had started work to create a bank that was independent and able to become a high-end private banking pole. We will now restart that project...," CEO Giorgio Girelli told Reuters. On Sunday the Italian government approved a decree to wind down regional lenders Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza which collapsed after years of mismanagement and poor lending.