Headlines

Government action to address domestic and European Union policies that cripple Britain's steel sector are still not enough to secure the industry's future, a parliamentary committee report said yesterday, Reuters reported. Nearly 4,000 jobs were lost in the British steel industry in October alone -- equivalent to about a fifth of the workforce - as Tata Steel buckled under pressure from decade-low steel prices ST-CRU-IDX, while SSI UK and Caparo Industries shut up shop.

Turkey’s central bank left interest rates unchanged for a 10th consecutive month on Tuesday, sending markets tumbling after it defied expectations that it would raise rates in tandem with the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Monetary Policy Committee kept the benchmark one-week repo rate at 7.5 percent, and left unchanged its interest-rate corridor, ranging from the overnight borrowing rate of 7.25 percent to the 10.75 percent overnight lending rate.

A special working group must prepare by year-end measures for state support of VEB, Russia's state development bank, its chairman Vladimir Dmitriev said today, Reuters reported. The Russian authorities are considering support for VEB worth 1.2 trillion roubles ($16.85 billion) which aims to help it deal with bad loans and repay external debt. Dmitriev said that the bank was responsible for "certain tasks" which might negatively affect its balance sheet at some point, so the state must share responsibility for funding such operations and provide "other forms" of support if needed.

Intrum Justitia AB plans to step up the pace of acquisitions as it aims to increase its presence in credit management services in coming years, according to acting Chief Executive Officer Erik Forsberg, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Europe’s largest debt collector now wants to do “at least two, or more, acquisitions, on average over a few years,” Forsberg said in his first full interview since taking the helm from Lars Wollung on Nov. 2. In May, Wollung had set the takeover target at two smaller companies a year, on average, over five years.

A U.S. court-appointed mediator said that Argentina's new government and holdout bondholders are to meet in the second week of January to start "substantive" talks toward settling a more than decade-old sovereign debt dispute, Reuters reported yesterday. The talks would mark a major breakthrough in the dispute, which has caused Argentina to be shut out of the international capital markets and encouraged the prior governments of both Cristina Fernandez and Nestor Kirchner to adopt unorthodox economic policies.

The Indian government yesterday introduced a bill in parliament aimed at bringing sweeping changes to an outdated and overburdened bankruptcy system, setting deadlines for the first time for processing insolvency cases, Reuters reported. At present, Asia's third-largest economy has competing laws with unclear jurisdictions to deal with the liquidation or revival of companies. The bill, introduced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the lower house, seeks to enact a single bankruptcy code.

Failed Icelandic bank Glitnir said on Thursday it had got agreement from the central bank to begin paying out billions of dollars owed to creditors since it collapsed in 2008, Reuters reported. Iceland's financial system crashed during the global financial crisis triggering the imposition capital controls to protect the country's krona currency. These rules have prevented creditors of Iceland's failed banks from recovering money generated from asset sales.

Shades of the 1990s are haunting China’s rust-belt cities as strapped state-owned employers look at cutting jobs, with beleaguered Wuhan Iron & Steel Group the latest company said to be laying off thousands of workers, the Financial Times reported. The dismantling of market pricing reforms and the “iron rice bowl” system of life-long jobs in the 1990s eliminated thousands of state-owned small or medium-sized enterprises, which specialised in everything from industrial boilers to wedding photographs.

New quarterly figures from the Central Bank show mortgage debt declined by €61 million to €60.3 billion during the third quarter of 2015, the Irish Times reported. The annual rate of decline in loans for home purchase was 0.8 per cent at end-September 2015, following a 1.4 per cent decline at end-June. Fixed-rate mortgages increased by €839 million, or 14.6 per cent, during the third quarter to stand at €6.6 billion.

Romania’s Government considers postponing the personal insolvency law’s implementation, Romania-Insider.com reported. The Justice Ministry has come up with the proposal, following a request of the Superior Council of Magistracy (CSM). Romania’s justice system doesn’t have the necessary staff and lacks the time to hire specialists until the end of the year, according to CSM, reports local Digi24. The personal insolvency law should enter into force at the beginning of 2016.