Headlines

Jurong Aromatics Corp, operator of one of the world's largest petrochemical plants, cannot service its interest payments and is negotiating a debt restructuring with bankers amid a plunge in oil prices, people familiar with the situation said, The Straits Times reported. Operations at the US$2.4 billion (S$3.4 billion) plant have stalled since December as the Singapore-based group remains locked in talks with lenders including BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered, as well as suppliers Glencore, BP and SK Energy, the sources said.

Some 110,000 credit card customers of AIB may be in line for a pay-out of up to €128 following the launch of a redress scheme by the Central Bank, the Irish Times reported. Customers who purchased card protection insurance from Pinnacle Insurance plc (Cardif Pinnacle) through AIB, betweenAugust 1st 2006 and 2014, typically at an annual premium cost of €16, may now be entitled to a refund. Someone who took out a policy in 2006 and held it until 2014 may be entitled to a refund of as much as €128 but the bank said the average claim will be €66.

Drug maker Lundbeck will slash costs by 3 billion Danish crowns ($444.6 million) and cut 1,000 jobs in a bid to regain profitability, the company announced on Wednesday. The Danish firm, which appointed a new chief executive last May, sells drugs to treat depression and other brain diseases, but several key patents have expired in recent years, leading to a slump in revenues.

While other countries fret over banks that are too big to fail, South Korea is grappling with the concept of systemically important human beings. Last week President Park Geun-hye announced a special pardon for Chey Tae-won, scion of the founding family of SK Group, South Korea’s third-biggest chaebol conglomerate. Mr Chey was halfway through a four-year jail sentence for embezzling more than $40m from SK companies — his second conviction for defrauding shareholders. But the country’s main business lobby groups campaigned for Mr Chey’s release on the basis of his importance to the economy.

The shock waves from China’s surprise yuan devaluation are ricocheting through African economies, sending currencies tumbling and stoking anxiety that the continent’s biggest trading partner might be losing its appetite for everything from oil to wine, The Wall Street Journal reported. In South Africa, the rand hit a 14-year low of 12.94 to the dollar on Monday, extending a 2% drop since Aug. 10 and a 12% slide this year.

Allies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel intensified their efforts to prevent a rebellion in their ranks two days before a crucial vote in Parliament on a new, €86 billion ($95 billion) bailout package for Greece, The Wall Street Journal reported. “I am fully convinced that it’s the right decision to vote in favor of it (the bailout), particularly because I didn’t make this decision easy for myself,” Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said Monday in an interview on German television.

If finance were a boxing match, then the referee would be getting ready to intervene in emerging markets, the Financial Times reported. Already on the back foot because of fears over tighter US monetary policy, and taking a pounding from sliding commodity prices, the developing world’s stocks, bonds and currencies have just been on the receiving end of a haymaker from China — in the form of its modest but ominous devaluation. The rout has been fierce and broad.

Global banks are facing billions of pounds-worth of civil claims in London and Asia over the rigging of currency markets, following a landmark legal settlement in New York,the Financial Times reported. Barclays, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland were among nine banks revealed last Friday to have agreed a $2bn settlement with thousands of investors affected by rate-rigging in a New York court case.

The opening of the $3.5 billion Baha Mar mega-resort in the Bahamas is expected to be delayed beyond the start of the Christmas season, with the developer deep in an escalating legal battle with the Chinese companies that are providing most of the finance and construction work, Reuters reported. Even if construction on the unfinished resort resumed this month, there is little chance the project could be completed by mid-December, the start of the high season for Bahamas resorts, according to local contractors who have worked on the project.

At long last, European creditor nations and Greece have reached an agreement on a third bailout in five years, the International New York Times reported. The bailout, which was approved by Greece’s Parliament on Friday, included familiar details: In return for an infusion of 86 billion euros, or $95 billion, Greece has promised to increase taxes, cut spending and enact measures to make its economy function more efficiently. But there was one glaring omission.