Headlines

Lenders to Essar Steel Ltd have started discussions to restructure the company’s debt after it failed to meet a June-end deadline to find a buyer, said two people aware of the development. The debt-laden company has been looking for a buyer since November. “There has been a lot of discussion and waiting in this case. Now, the consortium has decided that it is best to restructure the debt and move on. As such, Essar Steel is a non-performing account with a large number of banks in the consortium,” said a banker at a state-owned bank involved in the case, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Britain’s vote to leave the European Union could hurt Norway’s exports to Britain and hit the profitability of the Nordic country’s banking, insurance and property sectors, the International Monetary Fund said, Reuters reported. Britain is Norway’s third-biggest destination for goods produced by its mainland economy, which excludes the volatile oil and shipping sector, with an eight-per cent share. Mainland exports are primarily seafood, including salmon, but Norway is also a major gas supplier to Britain and its $860-billion wealth fund, the world’s largest, is a major foreign investor.

Woosh Wireless' creditors, thought to be owed almost $13 million, have voted to put the troubled internet provider into liquidation, The New Zealand Herald reported. The business was founded in 1999 and has burned through more than $100 million since that time. Grappling with the challenge of its ageing technology, the company had been winding down some of its operations. It sold about 10,000 of its customers to Slingshot last year and still had about 2000 on its books. After trading unprofitably, two Woosh companies were put into voluntary administration in May.

Britain’s vote to leave the EU has produced dire predictions for the U.K. economy. The damage to the rest of Europe could be more immediate and potentially more serious. Nowhere is the risk concentrated more heavily than in the Italian banking sector, The Wall Street Journal reported. In Italy, 17% of banks’ loans are sour. That is nearly 10 times the level in the U.S., where, even at the worst of the 2008-09 financial crisis, it was only 5%. Among publicly traded banks in the eurozone, Italian lenders account for nearly half of total bad loans.

Brazil's Óleo e Gás Participações SA, which has been under bankruptcy protection for nearly three years, said on Monday it has restarted output from its Tubarão Martelo offshore oil field near Rio de Janeiro after a four-month outage, Reuters reported. The restart came after Óleo e Gás, formerly known as OGX Petróleo e Gás Participações SA, received permission from Brazil's oil regulator ANP. Output had been shut since March 6, when the field produced 6,222 barrels of oil, according to the Óleo e Gás website.

Australia could lose its rare triple-A credit rating after a tight general election raised questions about the next government’s ability to curb spending and bring down debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. The election remains too close to call, but the prospect of a lengthy period of political instability—such as a hung parliament in the 150-seat House of Representatives, where governments are formed—complicates Australia’s challenge in revving up an economy hit by the end of a decadelong mining boom.

Three former Barclays bankers have been found guilty of conspiring to rig a key interest rate in a high profile trial, the Irish Times reported. Jonathan Mathew (35), a Libor submitter, along with traders Jay Merchant (45) and Alex Pabon (37), were found guilty of conspiring with others at Barclays to manipulate US dollar Libor – the benchmark interbank lending rate – for more than two years, until September 2007. They had denied wrongdoing in a 14-week trial at Southwark Crown Court in London.

Mexican homebuilder Urbi said on Monday it expects to generate income worth roughly 1.9 billion pesos ($103.08 million) in the 12 months following its latest cash injection, and 29 billion pesos ($1.57 billion) over the next five years, Reuters reported. In May, Urbi, which was forced to restructure its outsize debt load after sales of its cheap, single-unit homes slumped, said it got a capital injection of 886.8 million pesos that will allow it to resume operations.

UK insurers have warned that Brexit is unlikely to lead to a big dilution of the EU’s Solvency II capital rules. Solvency II, which came into force at the start of this year, is seen by many in the industry as an expensive, bureaucratic regime that puts them at a disadvantage when doing business outside the EU. Some people hope that Brexit will be an opportunity to roll it back.

An Italian bank bailout fund has taken control of a second lender after Germany rejected a plea for a more sweeping state-funded recapitalisation of the country’s banking system, the Financial Times reported. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, turned down the plea from Matteo Renzi, Italy’s prime minister, at an EU summit in Brussels on Wednesday evening, prompting a sharp fall on Thursday in Italian bank shares, which have now dropped 54 per cent this year.