Headlines

Medium-sized businesses were the most likely to be exposed to other firms' insolvencies in 2015, according to new research from insolvency professionals trade body R3, CRN reported. The research, which was based on R3's Business Distress Index which surveyed 500 UK businesses, found that 14 per cent of medium-sized firms (which employ 51 to 250 staff) were owed money in 2015 by an insolvent company. In total, R3 found that 113,000 UK businesses were owed money by companies going into insolvency procedures last year.

Asian markets tumbled on the first day of trading in 2016, with declines so steep in China that authorities halted all mainland trading before the end of the day, The Wall Street Journal reported. Analysts cited a number of reasons for the selling, including China’s disappointing manufacturing data, reported earlier Monday, and the coming removal of a ban on major shareholders from selling stakes, put in place during the summer stock crash. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 6.9%, its biggest decline on record for the first trading day of the year, before trading was halted.

Fianna Fáil has said the Government’s failure to deal with the “spiralling arrears crisis” in the sub-prime mortgage market is “disastrous” as the owners of such loans are amongst “the most aggressive in the market” at seeking court ordered repossessions, the Irish Times reported. New figures provided by the Central Bank indicate that 20,338 mortgage accounts issued by sub-prime lenders were in arrears of more than 90 days at the end of September 2015. This compares to 19,935 at the end of December 2014.

The quiet is almost spooky here on the outskirts of Nassau, where the waterscape frills of nearby Paradise Island give way to the vast ghost-resort that is Baha Mar, Bloomberg News reported. Just how the place ended up like this -- in a bankruptcy so colossal that it’s jeopardizing the Bahamas’s credit rating -- is the biggest business story to hit this Caribbean nation for as long as anyone here can remember. It stretches far beyond the white beaches and across time zones, to none other than the State Council of China.

The eurozone is being left behind—and not only in economic terms, in banking too, The Wall Street Journal reported. Global regulators have spent years pushing banks to meet higher capital demands. But European tardiness has left the bloc’s lenders still unsure how much capital is needed just as banks elsewhere get the answers they crave. Certainty is vital: once banks know how much capital they have to hold, they can make concrete economic decisions about which businesses or products work and which need to be re-engineered or abandoned. Banks in the U.K.

Electronics retailer Dick Smith has been put into receivership after its banks refused to keep propping it up following poor sales. The company, which has nearly 400 stores in Australia and New Zealand, said in August it was carrying too much of the wrong type of goods and that, combined with soft consumer demand, meant it was being forced to cut its margins to keep afloat. Since then it has twice warned that it wouldn't make its earnings forecasts - it slashed prices and had big pre-Christmas bargain sales.

Beijing Capital Tire Co. Ltd. (BCT), producer of the BCT, Jinglun and Autoguard brands, declared bankruptcy in October, a Chinese industry official has confirmed. According to Chinese media reports dated June 25 and Nov. 16, BCT had suspended production since early 2015 and started laying off 1,000 employees, or half of its total staff, about six months ago. BCT, an affiliate of state-owned conglomerate Beijing Capital Group in Beijing, reports having annual capacity of 7.1 million radial car, light truck and medium truck tires at two factories in the Beijing area.

The European Union entered a brave new world of bank “bail-ins” at the start of 2016. Europe has wasted so much taxpayer money in bailing out banks in recent years that it is right to try to get investors to help foot the bill. However, the tough program carries big political risks, the International New York Times reported. The crucial new rule is that no bank can be bailed out with public money until creditors accounting for at least 8 percent of the lender’s liabilities have contributed.

China had one of the best-performing stock markets in the world in 2015. Yet it was a dismal year for Chinese markets, The Wall Street Journal reported. Chinese stocks suffered an unprecedented summer crash that wiped out 43%, or $5 trillion, of their value at one point. That was followed by an abrupt 2% currency devaluation in August that sent shock waves through global markets. Bold reforms seen as crucial to Beijing’s efforts to turn around a slowing economy, such as a modern stock-listing system and lighter capital controls, stalled as the market turmoil unnerved authorities.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said his government “will not succumb to unreasonable demands” as it prepares to send the country’s creditors proposals on crucial reforms to the pension system this week, the Financial Times reported. “The creditors have to know that we are going to respect the agreement,” Mr Tsipras said in an interview with Real News newspaper on Sunday, referring to reforms demanded in exchange for Greece’s €86bn bailout agreement last year. However, he pledged that Greece “won’t succumb to unreasonable and unfair demands” for more pension cuts.