Headlines

A Dubai-based firm has urged the Supreme Court to prevent 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. Irish Bank Resolution Corporation alleges Mecon FZE is part of an alleged conspiracy by various Quinn family members and companies to place valuable assets beyond the bank’s reach.

The South Australian government said on Thursday it would provide A$50 million ($37 million) in funding to help keep Arrium Ltd's loss-making Whyalla steelworks open under a new owner, Reuters reported. State Labor premier Jay Weatherill has also pressed Australia's two major parties to commit to contribute A$100 million from the federal government to help keep Whyalla open. "The Arrium operations at Whyalla are critical to both South Australia and the nation as a whole - it is essential that we retain our sovereign steel-making capability," Weatherill said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia’s $72bn National Transformation Plan imposes a hefty 346 targets on ministries and governmental bodies with the ambitious goal of ending decades of addiction to hydrocarbon revenues and transforming an economy reliant on the state, the Financial Times reported. The pet project of Mohammed bin Salman, the powerful deputy crown prince, the plan’s targets include creating 1.2m private sector jobs in the next five years, with the aim that half of all Saudis will seek employment outside of the state sector by 2020. Here are five key themes in the 112-page document.

South Korea will pump $9.5bn into state-run policy lenders reeling from huge losses on loans made to the beleaguered shipbuilding and shipping sectors to help them deal with further corporate distress, the Financial Times reported. Corporate restructuring has emerged as the top priority of President Park Geun-hye’s administration as losses balloon in major export industries and the country’s industrial titans struggle to stay afloat under mountains of debt and amid slowing economic growth.

The European Commission is unlikely to extend global rules on how failed banks absorb losses to European lenders below the top tier of international institutions, a Commission official told Reuters on Wednesday. Such a decision would find favour with Germany and Britain, which have urged the EU executive not to extend the so-called TLAC requirement beyond the very biggest banks.

Czech coal miner OKD, the insolvent unit of New World Resources (NWR), urgently needs a state loan of up to 1 billion crowns ($42.1 million) to keep operating, Industry Minister Jan Mladek said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Mladek, in a statement, said that a state-backed loan was the only option for OKD to secure financing to keep operating this month. 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.

If the U.K. votes to leave the European Union, it is now clear it will be largely because a majority of Britons are no longer wiling to accept the right of EU citizens to live and work in the U.K., The Wall Street Journal reported in a commentary. The campaign was electrified by data published last month that showed a net 333,000 immigrants came to the U.K. in 2015—184,000 of them from the EU.

Saudi Arabia’s finance minister confirmed that the kingdom was considering imposing income tax on foreign residents as it seeks to raise non-oil revenues and cut spending to fund its $72bn plan to diversify the economy, the Financial Times reported. Riyadh, which is scrambling to raise funds needed for wide-ranging reforms from fiscal and investment policy to social initiatives, is taking the unprecedented step of tapping global bond markets and reprioritising domestic spending.

The chief executive of BHS told British lawmakers that Dominic Chappell, the former bankrupt who bought the company in 2015, threatened to kill him after being confronted about cash transferred out of the retailer that is now being wound down, Reuters reported. Appearing at a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday, CEO Darren Topp was scathing in his assessment of Chappell, whose Retail Acquisitions Ltd (RAL) bought BHS from billionaire Philip Green for 1 pound in March 2015.

Is there a path towards making Greece a successful self-financing economy within the eurozone? What would be required to put it on that path? These are the big questions about the economic plight of Greece and its ghastly relations with its partners, the Financial Times reported. Neither has much to do with what is going on, which is “extend and pretend”: the eurozone pretends Greece is not in default; Greece pretends it will reform; and both play for time. What would an honest reckoning look like?