Headlines

Four parties have expressed interest in buying one or both of South Korea's STX Offshore & Shipbuilding Co Ltd and a controlling stake in STX France SA, a spokesman for the Seoul court overseeing STX Offshore's receivership said on Friday. The Seoul Central District Court spokesman declined to comment on the names of the parties. The South Korean court in October decided to allow the two units of the collapsed STX shipbuilding group to be sold either separately or together.

A liquidator appointed to Gibraltar-based Enterprise Insurance, which was active in the Irish motor market in recent years, has found the company had committed a number of regulatory breaches before it collapsed, the Irish Times reported. In a report submitted to Gibraltar’s supreme court last week and published on Friday, the liquidator, Freddie White of Grant Thornton (Gibraltar), found that Enterprise failed to set aside enough technical reserves to cover the risks it was insuring.

Guaranteed rises in the state pension should be scrapped according to a damning report by an all-party committee of MPs, which claims the British economy has become “heavily skewed” towards well-off baby boomers, The Guardian reported. Following an inquiry into intergenerational fairness, the Commons work and pensions committee, chaired by influential welfare reformer Frank Field, said the “triple lock” guarantee on the state pension should be axed as it is “unfair and unsustainable”.

Greece's prime minister told his new cabinet on Sunday that Athens "can and will" conclude its second bailout review in time for long-awaited debt relief talks to begin in December, Reuters reported. Alexis Tsipras reshuffled his government on Friday and urged his ministers to work hard to rapidly complete the review, which includes labor reforms and fiscal issues Athens has agreed to implement under its bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Commerzbank AG on Friday said it swung to a net loss in the third quarter after booking hefty provisions for an extensive overhaul, but still expects to make a profit over the full year. Germany’s second-largest lender by market capitalization reported a €288 million ($319.5 million) net loss in the three months to the end of September, compared with a €230 million profit in the same quarter last year. The figure was better than the €551 million loss forecast by analysts in a poll by The Wall Street Journal.

German prosecutors have widened an inquiry into suspected market manipulation by managers at Volkswagen to include the carmaker's supervisory board Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch, VW said on Sunday. The investigation, which relates to Poetsch's time as finance chief, is the latest fallout from VW's admission last year that it cheated on diesel emissions tests. VW has acknowledged it installed software that deactivated pollution controls on more than 11 million diesel vehicles sold worldwide, damaging its global business and prompting the departure of Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn.

Egypt has devalued its currency by 48% and announced that it will be allowed to float – measures that meet a key demand by the International Monetary Fund in order to secure a $12bn (£9.6bn) loan over three years to overhaul its ailing economy, The Guardian reported. The devaluation pegged the Egyptian pound at 13 to the dollar, up from nearly nine on the official market. A central bank auction of dollars will be held later on Thursday, allowing supply and demand to determine the value of the pound for the first time in decades.

The French government, which owns the remaining 33.3 percent of STX France, hopes to strike a deal that separates the French arm from its South Korean parent and leaves the French state with a blocking minority stake. Aside from the stake ownership, France also has special bid-blocking powers related to strategic industries such as defense. "We have two intervention tools and should there be offers that do not fit our industrial aspirations we will not hesitate to use them," Sirugue told Reuters.

The fist net outflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Ireland since 2011 has been linked to the restructuring of balance sheets amid the current clampdown on multinational tax avoidance. The OECD’s latest analysis of FDI trends and developments shows the flow of foreign investment into Ireland fell to minus $0.4 billion in the first half of 2016, driven by a $19 billion outflow in the second quarter.

Volkswagen AG’s efforts to cut costs amid mounting burdens of its emissions-cheating scandal face a new roadblock, as core shareholders and labor representatives meet for an extraordinary shareholders meeting on Friday to try to break an impasse over restructuring, The Wall Street Journal reported. Chief Executive Matthias Müller, who took command a year ago following reports that the car maker had installed illegal emissions software in some models, is trying to realign the company’s businesses.