Headlines

Singapore police disclosed in court Thursday that the Malaysian financier at the heart of a scandal involving the Malaysian state investment fund 1MDB is a person of interest in the city-state’s continuing probe into an alleged multibillion-dollar money-laundering scheme, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Irish households remain the fourth most indebted in the EU, according to new figures from the Central Bank, the Irish Times reported. The quarterly financial accounts show household debt was largely unchanged at €148.4 billion during the second quarter of 2016. This represented a decline of less than €0.2 billion, and was the lowest quarterly fall in household debt since the fourth quarter of 2008, when households first began to reduce debt. The Central Bank said household debt as a proportion of disposable income fell over the quarter from 151.3 per cent to 150.4 per cent.

The Irish government on Wednesday filed an appeal seeking to stop efforts by European authorities to force Apple to pay the country $14.3 billion to cover what antitrust officials say are unpaid taxes, the International New York Times reported. Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s competition chief, ordered Apple in August to pay the amount, alleging the company had received preferential tax rulings from the Irish government that gave Apple an unfair advantage over rivals. Both Ireland and Apple deny any wrongdoing.

Siccar Point Energy, a company backed by Blackstone, the US private equity group, has agreed to pay up to $1 billion for the North Sea assets of Austria’s OMV, the Irish Times reported. It marks the biggest acquisition in the UK offshore energy industry since crude prices crashed two years ago and highlights the interest of private equity investors in the North Sea as cash-strapped oil companies shed assets.

The European Central Bank said it had agreed to include Deutsche Bank’s sale of its stake in lender Hua Xia in stress test results earlier this year after Chinese authorities gave assurances the deal would be approved, the Irish Times reported. The official cut-off point for transactions to be included in the health checks of Europe’s banks was the end of 2015. Yet, while Deutsche Bank announced the deal at the end of December, China’s financial authorities had still not approved it when the stress tests were completed in July. They finally did so last week.

The European Central Bank’s top supervisor said “good bankruptcy laws” across Europe are imperative to solving the bloc’s problem of nonperforming loans, The Wall Street Journal reported. Speaking in front of the European Parliament on Wednesday, Daniele Nouy said she “put a lot of hope” in work being carried out by the EU to harmonize bankruptcy laws to provide clarity for investors seeking to buy nonperforming corporate debt and to build a strong capital markets union. “We need laws at the EU level, and courts and judges to implement those laws,” said Ms. Nouy.

Scotland called for more clarity on Britain's Brexit strategy on Wednesday, offering a critical response to the British government's efforts to hold together a fraying United Kingdom as it prepares to leave the European Union, Reuters reported. The London-based British government began a series of meetings with Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolved administrations designed to reassure them that they will have a say in shaping the country's future ties with the EU.

Romanian state-owned energy complex Complexul Energetic Hunedoara will exit insolvency after the Alba Iulia Court of Appeal decided yesterday to cancel the decision of the Hunedoara Court from June, which approved the company’s insolvency, Romania-Insider.com reported. The decision of the Alba Iulia Court of Appeal is final. The insolvency house GMC SPRL Craiova, which has managed the energy complex since June, will receive a fixed amount of RON 32,000 (EUR 7,100) for its work in the last three months.

Rosneftegaz, the state holding company that controls Russian oil major Rosneft, is considering helping Rosneft finance the buyback of some of its shares in Rosneft, three sources with knowledge of the discussions said, Reuters reported. The Russian state is preparing to sell a 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft, the biggest Russian oil producer and one of the largest in the world, as part of a privatization scheme intended to plug holes in the budget this year.

Investors are preparing to fight Mozambique's plan to restructure their $726 million of bonds a second time, threatening a stalemate that could delay the country's access to much-needed aid, Dow Jones Business News reported. Bondholders are forming a committee to prepare for a potential default and say they won't negotiate debt relief now because they mistrust the government's financial disclosures and want it to seek relief from other creditors first, according to people familiar with the matter.