Headlines

Tension between Brussels and Italy over the country’s 2017 budget escalated on Tuesday after the European Commission imposed a 48-hour deadline on Rome to explain why it was breaking previous fiscal agreements, the Financial Times reported. Matteo Renzi, Italy’s prime minister, in effect, dared the commission last week to challenge him over a budget proposal that scraps the deficit reduction targets to which the country had committed itself this year.

The new bankruptcy law could come into effect by the end of the year, amid concerns that the court system may struggle to implement it effectively, The National reported. The bankruptcy law was published in the country’s official legal gazette on September 29, stating that it will come into effect three months later, according to a senior Abu Dhabi lawyer and a senior executive at the Ministry of Finance.

The State’s banks are putting plans in place for the sale of billions of euro of bonds where investors can suffer losses during a crisis, as European authorities set targets for euro area lenders in the coming weeks, the Irish Times reported. AIB subsidiary EBS has acknowledged in a bond prospectus that it and the parent group may have to sell a “significant amount” of such notes, to be calculated as a percentage of banks’ total liabilities, under the incoming rules. The bank made the comments under a list of risks facing the group in the document.

The Supreme Court will give judgment at a later date on the Motor Insurers’ Bureau of Ireland’s (MIBI) appeal against decisions it is potentially liable for claims brought against collapsed insurer Setanta, the Irish Times reported. The appeal concluded on Tuesday before a seven-judge court presided over by the Chief Justice, Ms Justice Susan Denham, who said the court was reserving judgment. The court did not specify a date for judgment but it is expected to take some weeks.

Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy has been hit by falling oil prices and what critics say is government mismanagement of state resources, reports Anatoly Kurmanaev, The Wall Street Journal Energy Journal blog reported. Oil accounts for 96% of the Latin American country’s exports. Venezuela’s crude production was 2.3 million barrels a day in September, 11% lower than a year earlier, according to government figures, and the consulting firm Medley & Associates expects the fall to accelerate in the next 12 months.

Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd said on Monday its European routes services have completely halted, and a Seoul court overseeing its receivership process has approved winding down four of its European units, Reuters reported. The four units, Hanjin Shipping Europe GmbH & Co, Hanjin Shipping Hungary Transportation Ltd, Hanjin Shipping Poland Sp and Hanjin Spain S.A., will begin winding down by early November using methods such as declaring bankruptcy or being liquidated, Hanjin said in a regulatory filing.

A seven-judge Supreme Court is hearing the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland’s appeal against decisions that it is potentially liable for claims brought against collapsed insurer Setanta, the Irish Times reported. Because all motor insurers operating in Ireland must be members of the MIBI, the decisions by the High Court and Court of Appeal effectively mean that all insurers entering the Irish market must undertake an “enormous potential liability”, Paul Gallagher SC, for the MIBI, said.

In the June referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union, 61 percent of the voters in the city of Sunderland voted to quit. As a result, 6,700 jobs at Nissan’s factory there are now in peril as the Japanese carmaker weighs whether to build the next version of its Qashqai model in the northeast of soon-to-be-independent England. So you have to wonder whether Mackems, as the locals are called, might vote differently if they had a second chance. The economic implications of life outside of the EU are starting to sink in.

Software company Wynyard Group has been put in voluntary administration. KordaMentha partners Neale Jackson and Grant Graham have been appointed administrators of the company, which creates security software for use by companies and law enforcement agencies. It's been a difficult year for Wynyard, with its board warning in August that the company's future was in question and signalling uncertainty underlying its assumptions about cash-flow and future sales.

European and Asian investors have been rushing into the United States bond market, spurred by a global glut of savings that has reached record levels, the International New York Times reported. Running from near-zero interest rates at home, foreign buyers are piling into the booming market for corporate bonds, including high-grade debt securities issued by the likes of IBM and General Electric and riskier fare churned out by energy and telecommunications companies.