Headlines

Tata Steel, the biggest steelmaker in Britain, may cut about 1,200 jobs as part of plans to restructure its struggling operations, it said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The move would be another blow to the UK steel sector, hit by weak steel prices, after the liquidation of the UK's second-largest steelmaker SSI UK was announced this month. Tata plans to halt production of steel plate, which would lead to about 900 job losses in Scunthorpe in northern England and 270 in Scotland, plus a small number at other sites, it said in a statement.

China's Sinosteel will delay the payment of interest to its bondholders due on Tuesday, it said, after the state-owned company extended the date investors can start redeeming its bonds by a month. The company made the announcement in a statement posted on the website of one of the country's main bond clearing houses. On Monday, the steel trader extended a put option date for investors by a month, amid reports the debt-laden firm had asked investors to hold off seeking redemptions due to liquidity problems.

A co-owner of Russia's S7 Airlines, Vladislav Filev, has signed an agreement to buy at least 51 percent of airline Transaero, a spokeswoman for S7 said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Transaero, Russia's second-biggest airline, is laden with debt. Two of its main creditors, Sberbank and Alfa Bank, have filed bankruptcy cases against the airline after it lost out on a lifeline deal with competitor Aeroflot. Read more.

The European Commission and Germany have reached a provisional deal to restructure HSH Nordbank, in a move that gives the ailing bank a chance of recovery, the Financial Times reported. The deal, which is the result of two years of negotiations, is expected to be finalised early next year. Once this is done, HSH — which has struggled to make a profit since shipping loans it had made went bad during the financial crisis — will be allowed to split itself into an operating company and a holding company.

Asia-focused miner Besra would file for bankruptcy under Canadian law after considering all available alternatives to “decisively” deal with its cost and debt structure and to narrow its strategic focus in an effective and timely manner, Mining Weekly reported. The company on Monday stated that the proceedings would also facilitate a restructuring of its unsecured notes using a straightforward process otherwise unavailable to management.

China’s bungled stock market bailout was a significant setback to its decades-long efforts to build a modern financial system, the International New York Times reported. Its currency devaluation shocked global investors and altered the policy calculus at central banks from Hanoi to Washington. A highly anticipated package of overhauls to sprawling state-owned companies was a crushing rebuke to hopes that China would move to privatize such businesses. Instead of reducing their stakes, the Communist Party said it would increase its control over such companies.

On October 15, 2015, at the Outlook seminar experts, decision makers and business representatives in Riga met to discuss the insolvency process and its impact on Latvia’s business and investment climate, The Baltic Course reported.

Singapore’s bond market is bracing for the latest unfortunate export from Indonesia: debt defaults, Bloomberg News reported. The city state, shrouded in smog from fires in its neighbor, is also starting to feel the impact of that nation’s currency woes. Indonesian phone retailer PT Trikomsel Oke’s Singapore-dollar bonds plunged to record lows last week after it blamed a weak rupiah when flagging a possible bond restructuring that would be the local market’s first in six years.

The European Central Bank has, on average, slightly raised the minimum capital level that it demands large euro zone banks hold, the ECB's supervision chief said on Monday. The ECB's Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) is deciding how much additional capital, known as Pillar 2, each of the 122 banks under its supervision must hold in 2016. It is also setting a further buffer for globally significant euro zone banks.

Greece’s lawmakers approved Friday the first bill containing tough austerity measures and economic overhauls agreed under its new bailout program, The Wall Street Journal reported. After a week-long debate, the bill, which includes stricter pension rules, tax hikes and tougher fines for tax evasion, was passed by the majority of Greece’s 300 lawmakers.