Headlines

DBS Group Holdings, Singapore's biggest lender, said it expects to recover about half of its total exposure of S$700 million ($517.4 million) to Swiber Holdings Ltd, the oilfield services provider that filed to wind up operations, Reuters reported. DBS said on Thursday that it would tap into its reserves to provide fully for the anticipated shortfall and that it expects the net allowance charge to be lower, at about S$150 million. Swiber filed for liquidation on Wednesday, buckling under millions of dollars of debt to become the latest victim of the slump in oil prices.

Over dinner with reporters at an upscale Roman hotel in November, Pier Carlo Padoan, Italy’s finance minister, was asked what he would do if he had a magic wand to help his country’s sluggish economy. The answer was telling: he would wipe away the huge stock of non-performing loans that had accumulated on the balance sheets of Italy’s banks during the recession.

China’s foreign exchange regulators are struggling to stem the flow of personal wealth spilling offshore via Hong Kong’s insurance industry, the latest results from the world’s second-largest insurer suggest, the Financial Times reported. On Thursday AIA Group said that the value of new business in the territory increased by 60 per cent to $537m in the first six months of the year, noting a “substantial uplift in new business from mainland Chinese customers”.

The judge overseeing the bankruptcy protection of Brazilian phone carrier Oi SA could force the company to call a shareholder vote on proposed changes to its board as soon as next week, according to a lawyer for an activist shareholder, Reuters reported. The ruling should come after the judge hears opinions from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the in-court administrator in Oi's bankruptcy, and the public prosecutor's office, João Mendes de Oliveira Castro, legal advisor to Oi's minority shareholder Société Mondiale, said in a phone interview on Thursday.

A Dubai-based firm has failed to get a Supreme Court order aimed at preventing it being sued here over its acquisition of a multi-million euro property in India from companies controlled by members of the family of businessman Sean Quinn, the Irish Times reported.

Grupo Isolux Corsan SA won creditor approval for a 2 billion-euro ($2.2 billion) debt-restructuring plan, paving the way for a Spanish court to authorize the program, Bloomberg News reported. The engineering company received backing from almost 90 percent of creditors and it intends to ask the court to impose the plan on other bondholders, according to a statement on Thursday. Under the proposal, 1.4 billion euros of debt will be turned into convertible instruments, giving creditors 95 percent of the restructured company. Existing shareholders will retain 5 percent.

Banco Santander of Spain said on Wednesday that its profit declined by nearly half in the second quarter on restructuring charges and a contribution to a fund to help finance bank “bail-ins” in Europe, the International New York Times reported. For the three months ended June 30, the lender reported a profit of 1.28 billion euros, or about $1.4 billion. That compared with a profit of €2.54 billion in the second quarter of 2015. The second quarter included a gain of €227 million on the sale of its stake in Visa Europe.

A series of bond defaults in north-east China is exposing creditors’ frustration at the lack of a transparent process for resolving bad debt as cash-strapped local governments step back increasingly from taxpayer bailouts, the Financial Times reported. President Xi Jinping’s push for “supply-side reform” is centred on cutting excess capacity and paring back credit to so-called zombie companies, many of them state-owned. That is setting up conflicts between creditors and local governments that rely on state factories for employment and tax revenue.

The Czech government approved a 700 million crown ($29 million) loan to help keep afloat hard coal miner OKD, an insolvent unit of New World Resources , the prime minister and industry minister said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. OKD, a major employer in the Czech Republic's industrial northeast, was declared insolvent by a court in May after its owners failed to secure government aid to help it through a sharp fall in global coal prices.

European Union officials, facing the rise of populist movements across the region, opted against hitting Spain and Portugal with sanctions on Wednesday for breaking the bloc’s rules on government spending, the International New York Times reported. The refusal to impose fines highlights how the 28-nation bloc is struggling with divergent strains of populist and anti-European forces across a region where one member state, Britain, has already voted to leave.