Headlines

The best that can be said for Italy’s latest plan to rescue its third-largest bank is that it might just work, The Wall Street Journal reported. Monte dei Paschi di Siena announced on Friday a complex deal that would see it offload €40 billion ($44.7 billion) of its most toxic bad debts—equivalent to around 15% of its loan book—into a newly created privately-funded vehicle, paving the way for the lender to raise around €5 billion in fresh capital.

China’s banking regulator has warned companies not to use the word “bank” in their names following a series of scandals and multibillion-dollar investment scams, the Financial Times reported. Several outfits posing as accredited financial institutions have been exposed by the regulator in the past year, among them a China Construction Bank operating out of a convenience store in a village in Shandong province. Banks and other deposit-taking institutions in China need approval from the State Council to use the label “bank” or perform most banking services.

The board of Brazilian telephone operator Oi SA has referred to a bankruptcy judge an activist investor's request for legal action against company managers, its second straight bid to thwart the investor's moves, according to a securities filing late Wednesday. In the filing, Oi's board referred a decision on activist investor Société Mondiale's late July request for a shareholders meeting to approve an arbitration claim against controlling shareholder Pharol to the Rio de Janeiro judge overseeing the company's bankruptcy.

The Bank of England’s interest-rate cut Thursday buoyed stock markets here, but for some big British corporations, the move—the central bank’s first rate cut in seven years—is likely to translate into widening pension shortfalls, The Wall Street Journal reported. Many of the U.K.’s defined-benefit plans, which promise to pay out fixed benefits to retirees, have fallen deep into deficit. The value of contributions in many of the plans hasn’t kept up with expected outlays to pensioners in years to come.

China is edging closer to launching its own version of a popular hedging tool that protects investors in case of defaults, as the world’s No. 2 economy struggles to cope with slowing growth and record numbers of companies not paying back debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. The National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors, an industry body backed by China’s central bank, has consulted major banks and brokerage firms in recent weeks about the planned rollout of credit-default swaps, three people familiar with the situation said.

India's Suzlon Energy Ltd hopes to exit a process of corporate debt restructuring by March 2017, its chairman said on Thursday, a turnaround for a company that four years ago reeled under heavy debt after an ill-advised overseas expansion, the Economic Times reported. Suzlon's purchase of German wind energy firm RePower, now renamed Senvion, for 1.4 billion euros ($1.56 billion) in 2007 proved a costly mistake after the 2008 global financial crisis dented demand for wind turbines.

The faith that international investors have put in some credit sweeteners on Chinese debt is being tested with the latest default from one of the nation’s builders. China City Construction International Co., whose recent shareholder change triggered early redemption of its debt, failed to make full payment due June 20 on its 5.35 percent 2.5 billion yuan ($377 million) Dim Sum notes with an original 2017 maturity, people familiar with the matter said last month. Its parent China City Construction Holding Group Co.

Never before have China’s companies had so much cash and so little to spend it on. With investment opportunities sparse amid the country’s weakest economic expansion in a quarter century, Chinese firms reported an 18 percent jump in cash holdings during their latest quarter, the biggest increase in six years. The $1.2 trillion stockpile -- which excludes banks and brokerages -- grew at a faster pace than in the U.S., Europe and Japan, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

There is an “evens” chance of Britain falling into recession by the end of next year, according to a leading economic think-tank, which called on the Bank of England to wield a “sledgehammer” against the expected downturn, the Financial Times reported. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research revised down its forecast for growth by 0.3 percentage points in 2016 and 1.7 percentage points in 2017 — larger downgrades than those made by the International Monetary Fund last month.

Japanese growth is still sluggish. Consumers aren’t consuming much, and businesses aren’t investing. The government doesn't have many options to remedy this, and the Bank of Japan, which has sent both long-term and short-term interest rates into negative territory, has basically no more room to maneuver, Bloomberg News reported. The dreaded Zero Lower Bound is starting to bite. The BOJ is buying more stocks, but this too has its limits -- eventually companies become de facto nationalized, as the government becomes the majority shareholder.