Headlines

Receivers appointed over the assets of family members of businessman Seán Quinn say their living expenses should first be paid out of their personal accounts before any expenses are paid out of accounts frozen four years ago, the Irish Times reported. Lawyers for the Quinns said the receivers’ Commercial Court application was a “punitive” attempt to stop them getting on with their lives when they had been waiting years for legal proceedings to be heard.

China’s corporate debt risks sparking a bigger crisis if the authorities fail to tackle it, the International Monetary Fund has warned, the Financial Times reported. It is the latest red flag over China’s ballooning debt, which rose to a record 237 per cent of gross domestic product in the first quarter on the back of massive lending designed to boost economic growth. That has put the subject to the fore of this year’s annual IMF review of the Chinese economy with a team from the Fund set to conclude its latest monitoring mission on Tuesday.

While China’s state-owned banks plot debt-for-equity swaps to cut bad loans, one struggling peer-to-peer lender has brewed up a more novel plan: repaying its investors in baijiu, the popular Chinese liquor, the Financial Times reported. Chinatou.com said last week that it was no longer able to return cash to investors following the arrest of its chairman. Instead, it pledged to pay them in baijiu produced by a connected company “to minimise the loss to investors”.

The European Central Bank should consider making a clear commitment not to raise its key interest rates over the coming two years even if the annual rate of inflation were to exceed its target of just under 2%, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported. A weak recovery from its government debt and banking crisis, along with lower prices for oil and other commodities, has kept the inflation rate below the ECB’s target for the past three years.

British retail tycoon Philip Green has called for the resignation of the chair of a lawmakers' committee probing the collapse of the BHS department store chain he used to own, accusing him of seeking to destroy the billionaire's reputation, Reuters reported. In March last year, TopShop-owner Green sold BHS to an investor group led by Dominic Chappell, a former bankrupt with no retail experience, for one pound. The 88-year-old business went into administration in April and is being wound down after administrators failed to find a buyer, threatening 11,000 jobs.

A group of senior staff at Petroceltic International are expected to voice concerns about the alleged writing down of their employment rights in opposing a survival scheme for the company due to be put before the High Court next week for approval, the Irish Times reported. About 30 senior staff, including senior executives and management, have voted against the proposed scheme at creditors’ meetings. Under the proposals prepared by examiner Michael McAteer, the staff are due to receive just 5 per cent of monies owed to them under “change of control” clauses in their contracts.

The central bank has placed the New Rural Bank of Binalbagan (Negros Occidental) Inc. under receivership of the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC). Under Monetary Board (MB) Resolution No. 1002.A dated June 9,2016, the PDIC was named receiver, effectively taking over the bank on June 10. The office address of the bank was registered at National Highway, Barangay Progreso, Binalbagan, Negros Occidental. This comes after the MB decided to prohibit the rural bank from doing business and to place its assets and affairs under receivership.

South Korea’s central bank unexpectedly cut the benchmark interest rate to a new record low Thursday, citing growing risks to the economy including slowing global trade and the government’s push to restructure indebted companies, Bloomberg News reported. The decision to cut the seven-day repurchase rate to 1.25 percent, which was unanimous, was projected by only one of 18 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. While Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was the sole forecaster predicting a cut at this meeting, Citigroup Inc., HSBC Holdings Plc, and Nomura Holdings Inc.

Consumer inflation in China eased in May for the first time in seven months as food prices fell, giving policy makers more room to ease monetary policy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The consumer-price index rose 2.0% in May from a year earlier, compared with a 2.3% increase in April, the National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday. The rise in the key inflation gauge undershot a median 2.2% gain economists had expected. “This gives China a lot more space to keep policy settings pretty loose,” said IG Markets analyst Angus Nicholson.

The trial of four former Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Life & Permanent executives – Willie McAteer, John Bowe, Denis Casey and Peter Fitzpatrick – on charges connected with a €7.2 billion circular deposit between the two financial institutions in 2008 is just one of a number of criminal cases involving former Anglo directors, the Irish Times reported. The trial of Mr McAteer and Pat Whelan, another former Anglo Irish Bank executive, over an alleged fraudulent loan of over €8 million is slated to start in January 2017.