Headlines

China’s growing debt mountain poses a risk to Australia’s financial stability, a senior politician has warned, just weeks after the continent celebrated a quarter century of growth without a recession. China is Australia’s largest trading partner, accounting for A$150bn of two-way trade in 2015. Beijing is also an important foreign investor in Australia, leaving Canberra potentially among the developed nations most exposed to a Chinese downturn.

Óleo e Gás Participações SA , the oil firm founded by Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista now operating under bankruptcy court supervision, has proposed a debt-for-equity swap after a slump in oil prices compromised its financial health. In a Friday securities filing, the company said it proposed the plan to lenders owed 1.85 billion reais ($5a79 million) in debt, including a loan provided to help the firm emerge from bankruptcy, called a debtor-in-possession (DIP) facility.

Eurozone firms are socking away increasing amounts of money despite the European Central Bank’s effort to encourage business spending and investment by slashing interest rates below zero, The Wall Street Journal reported. ECB data published Friday show the net savings rate of nonfinancial corporations surged to 6.7% of their net income in the second quarter, a multiyear high and up sharply from 6.1% in the previous three months. Nonfinancial investment by such firms remained steady at 3.5%, where it has hovered for two years.

Renewable energy giant SunEdison Inc. has placed its Canadian arm into bankruptcy while the parent company seeks more time under court protection in the U.S. to sell off assets and work out a strategy for repaying billions of dollars in debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company’s Canadian division, which also designs and develops renewable energy projects, says it can no longer fund its operations. It sought protection Thursday from both creditors and lawsuits under Canada’s Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, or CCAA, the equivalent of chapter 11 in the U.S.

The U.K.’s biggest banks and financial firms could gain an additional 12 billion pounds ($14.6 billion) a year in revenue from Britain leaving the European Union, according to a report from a pro-Brexit lobby group, Bloomberg News reported. Leaving the 28-nation trading bloc and ending membership in the EU single market for trade and services would help Britain cut “stifling Brussels red tape” to help U.K.-based financial firms grow sales, the Leave Means Leave campaign said in the report published on Sunday.

The chief executive of Ulster Bank’s owner, Royal Bank of Scotland, has said the group may look at “safe” Irish acquisitions again in the coming years after it offloads a UK business at the behest of the European Union, the Irish Times reported. Ross McEwan, head of RBS for the past three years, told analysts on Friday that while the group had got “lots to do to clean up” Ulster Bank, he would be “open to” carrying out an acquisition in Ireland at some point.

For a man working to restore investor confidence in Kazakhstan’s central bank, the profit that governor Daniyar Akishev made betting bank money on the correct outcome of Britain’s Brexit referendum will go some way to convincing sceptics that he is a man with the smarts for the task, the Financial Times reported.

Permanent TSB has completed the last stage of its €8.4 billion deleveraging plan with the sale of the balance of its UK mortgage book to US-based Cerberus Capital Management, the Irish Times reported. The deal will involve a 15 per cent haircut on the £2.29 billion face value of the Capital Home Loans portfolio, which comprises mostly buy-to-let loans. PTSB chief executive Jeremy Masding described the transaction as a “milestone” deal, as it completes the final element of the restructuring plan agreed with the European Commission as part of its State aid.

Spain’s unemployment rate has fallen below 20 per cent for the first time in six years, as the country’s economic recovery continues to power ahead despite 10 months of political deadlock and government drift, the Financial Times reported. According to the latest data from Spain’s quarterly labour market survey, the economy created close to 480,000 jobs over the past 12 months. The number of unemployed fell by 530,000 over the same period, or 11 per cent, to 4.32m.

Germany's HSH Nordbank has arranged a deal which will see six container ships from collapsed South Korean line Hanjin chartered out to Denmark's AP Moller Maersk, the state-backed lender said on Thursday, Reuters reported. This is one of the first examples of Hanjin's lenders looking to resolve the fallout from the shipping firm's collapse in August, which has left an estimated $14 billion in cargo stranded on its ships. HSH, which was among a consortium of banks that had financed Hanjin ships, said in a statement that Maersk's container unit, the world's No.