Headlines

As the debate over how to carry out Brexit intensifies, the City of London finds itself in the firing line, the Wall Street Journal reported today. To some hard-line Brexiters, repeated warnings from bankers about the costs of quitting the European single market and losing passporting rights—which allow U.K.-based firms to sell financial services anywhere in the European Union—smack of special pleading. Passporting is a red herring, they say, because the U.K.

Minority shareholders of Singapore's main rail operator SMRT Corp Ltd voted overwhelmingly today in favor of Temasek Holdings' S$1.18 billion ($866 million) bid to take full control of the company, Reuters reported. Of the shareholders present at the meeting, 84.8 percent voted in support of the buyout, SMRT said in a statement. State investor Temasek, as majority shareholder, had no voting rights for the buyout of the 46 percent of SMRT shares it does not already own.

The South Korean court overseeing Hanjin Shipping's receivership process said on Wednesday that a sale of the world's seventh-largest container carrier, which collapsed late last month, is one of many options it is considering if the court concludes the company is to be rehabilitated, Reuters reported today. Judge Choi Ung-young, who serves as a court spokesman for media inquiries on the case, said a sale is possible in principle if it's deemed the best way to rehabilitate the company, but the court has yet to reach a decision. Hanjin, which filed for court receivership on Aug.

Greek lawmakers yesterday approved a bill aimed at unlocking €2.8 billion ($3.15 billion) in aid for the country that includes deeply unpopular plans to transfer state-controlled water companies to a privatization fund, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Greece is hoping to meet conditions needed to be paid the next tranche of aid from its third bailout worth up to €86 billion this week, ahead of an Oct. 10 meeting of eurozone finance ministers who can sign off on the payment.

Chinese regulators have pushed through the debt restructuring plan of a state-owned steel trader as the government gets set for a new round of debt cleanups, Bloomberg News reported today. Sinosteel Engineering & Technology Co. yesterday received a notice from its controlling holder Sinosteel Corp. that its parent’s plan had been approved with guidance from government agencies, according to a statement from the unit to the Shenzhen stock exchange. Beijing-based Sinosteel Corp.

PT Trikomsel Oke, an Indonesian mobile-phone retailer that defaulted on bonds last year, said that a court hearing on the company’s debt workout plan will be held today, Bloomberg News reported. A Jakarta commercial court had decided on Sept. 26 to postpone a deliberation meeting, the firm said in a filing to the Singapore stock exchange. The company said that it obtained approval from creditors based on the majority of votes cast at a meeting held on Sept. 22.

Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo sacked her finance minister on Wednesday and gave the job to the influential economy minister, saying a reshuffle was needed to make the government's wide-reaching economic stimulus plan more effective, Reuters reported today. Since winning an election last October, Szydlo's Law and Justice (PiS) party has pledged to spend billions of euros of private and public money to boost growth and wealth in Poland, while also giving the state more say in the economy.

European regulators said today that they had opened an “in-depth” investigation into the planned merger of the London Stock Exchange Group and Deutsche Börse over its potential impact on competition in financial markets, the New York Times reported. The inquiry came after several politicians, including Michel Sapin, France’s finance minister, raised concerns that the deal would stifle competition in European financial markets and was opened just months after Britain voted to leave the European Union.

General Motors of Canada Co. has pledged to eliminate the $2.6-billion deficit in the pension plans for its unionized workers and retirees as part of a new contract negotiated between the company and Unifor, The Globe and Mail reported yesterday. The automaker’s 29,000 retirees in Canada were worried about the future of the plans as Unifor and GM went into contract negotiations earlier this month, fearing that the assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., would be closed, the company would wind up the plans and they would take a hit of about 25 percent on their pensions.

A sleepy, former coal-mining town in northern Japan is taking unprecedented measures to combat its biggest challenge: a devastating shrinking of its population, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Since its peak in the post-war economic boom of the 1960s, the population of Yubari, a little more than an hour’s drive east of Sapporo on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, has declined by more than 90 percent to just 9,000 as older residents died and young people moved away to bigger cities. Ten years ago, it became Japan’s first municipality to declare bankruptcy.