Headlines

At first glance, it is not obvious watching the cargo moving on and off the Leverkusen Express at the Port of Southampton that the container shipping industry has been contending with the biggest financial crunch in its 60-year history. Cranes lift boxes over the towering sides of the 367m long vessel, just as they did before a glut of ships and a slowdown in global trade sent freight rates tumbling. But on a closer look, there are signs of financial stress on the Southampton quayside, the Financial Times reported.

Brussels has warned Italy to cut its record public debt by April to avoid breaching EU budget rules, the Financial Times reported. The European Commission said on Wednesday that Italy’s debt represented “a major source of vulnerability” as it urged Rome to meet its commitments to adopt pension reforms and other “structural measures” worth 0.2 per cent of gross domestic product. Valdis Dombrovskis, vice-president of the commission in charge of eurozone issues, said “as of today there would be a case to open an excessive deficit procedure for Italy”.

Barclays Bank of Kenya will focus on growing its non-interest income after a jump in bad debts and a government cap on lending rates cut its 2016 pretax profit by 10 percent, it said on Wednesday. The cap on lending rates, introduced last September, was expected to squeeze margins and profits at Kenyan banks, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The cap limits commercial bank lending rates at 400 basis points above the central bank rate, which stands at 10 percent. The government brought in the cap because it said lending rates were too high.

Italian banks are stuck in what stressed-debt experts call purgatory, still forced to pay a heavy price for their past sins despite loan data that suggests they are turning a corner. The rate at which loans are souring hit an eight-year low last year, but banks still face some 8 billion euros (6.74 billion pounds) a year in fresh writedowns, based on past rates at which already-soured loans have gone into outright default, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

China’s financial regulators are working together to draft sweeping new rules for the country’s rapidly-expanding asset-management products that aim to make it clear there’s no government guarantees on such investments, according to people familiar with the matter. The draft rules would apply to products issued by banks, insurers, brokerages and other financial institutions, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private, Bloomberg News reported. The rules would be phased in after existing products mature, and would only apply to new issues, they added.

When asked what he thought about the prospect of yet more austerity to be imposed on Greece by its international creditors, Nicos Papapetrou was fairly short, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. "I had better stop ... because I will start swearing," 49-year old Papapetrou, a shop assistant in Athens said. Greeks appeared resigned on Tuesday to accepting further budget cuts and tax rises after their government agreed to a last-minute compromise of new reforms to keep bailout funds flowing.

An all-out indefinite strike in Bus Éireann, which could spread to other parts of the public transport sector, now seems likely after the collapse of talks on Tuesday aimed at resolving the financial crisis at the company, the Irish Times reported. The board and management of the State-owned transport company are expected to consider on Wednesday whether to press ahead with highly controversial cuts to staff earnings as part of a survival plan. Unions representing the 2,600 staff at the company warned of an all-out strike if Bus Éireann moved unilaterally to impose cuts to pay.

For a quarter century, one man ruled the Rio Parana, the mighty Mississippi of Argentina. His name is Omar Suarez. Along the Parana, the nation’s pipeline for key exports including soybeans, corn and wheat, he is better known as El Caballo: a hard-charging horse. Little moved down the river unless Suarez, a union boss, received tribute, authorities say. For crews and companies alike, El Caballo epitomized the culture of corruption that has held back Argentina’s economy for decades, Bloomberg News reported. Today, the story of El Caballo is, in a way, playing out across the country.

The Chinese economy seems to have settled into a new normal of slower but still impressive growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. Underneath the apparent calm, however, trouble is brewing. Some of the problems are well known, such as burgeoning debt, the social fallout from deep industrial capacity cuts and the risk of a trade war with the U.S. But one risk has yet to be fully appreciated: financial distress. A cash crunch could paralyze pockets of the fast-growing shadow-banking sector and metastasize.

Struggling Italian clothing company Stefanel will ask a court for more time to submit a debt restructuring agreement with its creditors, two sources close to the situation said on Tuesday. In November, the court in Treviso, northern Italy, granted Stefanel until March 6 to file the documents, the International New York Times reported. "There is an agreement, but some details still need to be ironed out, both with creditor banks and potential new investors," one of the sources said.