Headlines

A Brazilian activist investor with a stake in bankrupt telecom provider Oi SA has requested a meeting with shareholders to discuss allegations that the carrier's majority owner Pharol SGPS SA committed improprieties, according to a securities filing made late on Friday. Société Mondiale, which holds 7 percent of Oi's voting shares, proposed that the meeting be called in eight days, the filing showed. Oi said in a statement on Monday its board would analyze Société's request, without giving a date for the meeting.

Britons’ vote to exit the EU is reverberating through its economy, with mixed effects. Some signs are already pointing to a slowdown, at least in the immediate weeks following the vote. Financial information firm IHS Markit Ltd. said on Monday its July purchasing managers index for the manufacturing sector fell to its lowest level since 2013, the latest in a series of gloomy economic signposts, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Vladimir Putin’s economy has been shrinking for 18 months but he still doesn’t have a plan to get it going again, Bloomberg News reported. After focusing almost exclusively on foreign policy since early 2014, the need to get the economy back into gear is forcing the Russian president to face a painful choice: bow to the demands of the markets or protect his Kremlin-centered system. “Putin makes political and geopolitical decisions confidently, but delays on the economic ones because they are harder for him,” said Yevgeny Yasin, a former economy minister.

Irish bank stocks opened down on Monday morning, as investors responded to stress tests from the European Banking Authority which placed AIB and Bank of Ireland among the worst performers in Europe, the Irish Times reported. Across Europe however, bank shares largely shrugged off the results of Friday’s tests. Italy’s Monte dei Paschi was the biggest loser, but has bounced as much as 10 per cent Monday morning after it was the subject to a last-minute rescue deal that means it will avoid a part-nationalisation.

Banks have warned regulators that Britain’s exit from the EU could undermine work they are doing to hive off their retail banking operations from more risky investment banking activities, the Financial Times reported. Executives at several banks, including Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, have asked regulators at the Bank of England for clarification on the potential fallout from Brexit for their ringfencing plans.

Singapore oilfield services company Swiber Holdings Ltd said on Friday it has applied to place itself under judicial management instead of liquidation, Reuters reported. Swiber shocked markets earlier this week by filing for liquidation, as it faced hundreds of million of dollars in debt and a decline in orders, becoming the largest local company to fall victim to the slump in oil prices.

Banks from Italy, Ireland, Spain and Austria fared worst in the latest European Union stress test, which the region's banking watchdog said on Friday showed there was still work to do in order to boost credit to the bloc's economy, Reuters reported. Eight years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers sparked a global banking meltdown, many of Europe's banks are still saddled with billions of euros in poorly performing loans, crimping their ability to lend and putting off investors.

Chronically low oil prices are disrupting a critical financial lifeline across Asia and depriving economies of much-needed hard currency, The Wall Street Journal reported. The flow of cash, or remittances, from Asian citizens working in the Gulf soared when the price of oil was high, boosting growth across the board. The billions of dollars in annual inflows paid for necessities such as schooling and health care and helped propel families into the middle class for the first time.

As oil-dependent Nigeria slides towards recession for the first time in more than two decades, the effects of the downturn are being felt across the country — in local markets, factories, government offices and among informal traders, the Financial Times reported. The International Monetary Fund last month sharply slashed its growth forecast for Africa’s largest economy, saying it would contract by 1.8 per cent this year, down from its estimate in April of 2.3 per cent growth for the year.

The Bank of Japan may have begun to retreat from its “whatever it takes” policy stance, effectively shifting pressure to the government to use fiscal spending and structural changes to help revive the economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The central bank announced only a modest dose of monetary stimulus Friday, disappointing investors who expected a bolder move to complement a new government spending package. That alone was taken as confirmation by many economists that the BOJ has run up against the limits of monetary policy.