Headlines

Deutsche Bank said on Thursday that it would eliminate 1,000 full-time positions in Germany as part of job cuts the embattled lender first announced last year, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. The announcement comes with Deutsche Bank facing a series of challenges. Its shares have plunged more than 50 percent in the past year over concerns about the pace of attempts to turn business around after a run of poor financial results and a failing grade in a banking stress test in June.

A Singapore court on Thursday appointed financial advisory firm KPMG as judicial manager for Swiber Holdings Ltd, allowing the troubled oilfield services firm to be kept under a process through which it could be nursed back to health, Reuters reported. Swiber applied in July to place itself under judicial management. It had initially filed for liquidation as it faced hundreds of million of dollars in debt and a decline in orders following a drop in global oil prices.

European shares opened higher with the beaten-down banking sector providing the biggest boost while reports of takeover sent Osram to a record high, the Irish Times reported. The Stoxx 600 index rose 0.3 per cent, rebounding from a fall in the previous session when worries that the European Central Bank might wind down the pace of bond-buying before the end of its asset purchase programme hit both shares and bonds.

RADET, the state-owned supplier of district heating and heated water for Bucharest, has officially entered into insolvency, following a ruling of the judges announced on Wednesday. The company has voluntarily opted for this procedure and now the creditors have 10 days to oppose this move. RADET has to pay debts worth over RON 3.9 billion to Electrocentrale Bucuresti (ELCEN), the biggest thermal energy producer in Romania. The mayor of Bucharest, Gabriela Firea, said recently that the insolvency of RADET was the safest move to secure the supply of heated water to the city.

Azerbaijan's mid-sized lender Bank Standard has been declared bankrupt, the Azeri Deposit Insurance Fund said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The bank's license was revoked from Oct. 1 and the fund operated as its liquidator. The fund received 460 million manats ($288 million) in state credits from the central bank on Tuesday in order to give compensation to those clients who had insured deposits at Bank Standard. Read more. (Subscription required.)

The Ghana Association of Restructuring and Insolvency Advisors (GARIA) has cautioned of alarming consequences on Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) to Ghana, if efforts are not intensified to develop the country’s insolvency regime. GARIA argues that the current practice where businesses are compelled to shut down over huge debts, downgrades the country’s reputation in attracting investments. “It is important for Ghana to have a good regime so that in addition to all our democratic dividends, goodwill and political dividends, we will be able to attract FDIs to the country.

An external early warning system for companies at risk of insolvency is central to a European Commission's draft proposal to cut the region's bankruptcy problem and help banks recoup bad loans. Non-performing loans (NPLs) on the euro zone's main lenders' balance sheets neared 1 trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) last year, about 9 percent of the bloc's gross domestic product, hitting banks' ability to make money on corporate lending.

Switzerland has stepped up pressure on Malaysia over corruption allegations linked to the 1MDB state investment fund, saying it suspected a Ponzi scheme had been used to conceal “substantial amounts” of misappropriated funds, the Financial Times reported. The Swiss attorney-general’s office said on Wednesday that its criminal inquiries relating to 1MDB had identified further suspect transactions involving the Swiss financial sector, including $800m misappropriated from investments in natural resources made by a 1MDB subsidiary, SRC.

The International Monetary Fund has urged governments to take action to tackle a record $152tn debt mountain before it triggers a fresh global financial and economic crisis, The Guardian reported. Warning that debt levels were not just high but rising, the IMF said it was vital to intervene early in order to mitigate the risks of a repeat of the damaging events that began with the collapse of the US sub-prime housing bubble almost a decade ago.

The World Bank on Wednesday urged Croatia's new cabinet, likely to be formed this month, to act quickly to tackle fiscal imbalances and restructure public spending so as to draw more investment and boost persistent low growth. The international lender said growth over the next two years was unlikely to surpass this year's forecast 2.4 percent. Next year the bank expects it to fall to 2.0 percent before recovering to 2.4 percent in 2018. "Next year we expect a major effort in fiscal consolidation to affect growth ...