Headlines

Royal Imtech, the Dutch engineering services company, filed for protection from its creditors yesterday, overwhelmed by accounting fraud in Germany that triggered three years of operating losses and asset writedowns. The company’s operating divisions are owned by lenders ING Group, Rabobank, Commerzbank and ABN Amro, court-appointed administrator Jeroen Princen said. Mr Princen said he was “confident that in very short order an agreement can be reached with the banks and a buyer”.

Beijing signaled with its currency devaluation that the domestic economic slowdown it has failed to reverse is no longer a problem confined within China’s borders. It is now the world’s problem, too, The Wall Street Journal reported. Chinese officials have cut interest rates four times in the past 12 months, increased the amount of money banks can lend out and pumped funds into the stock market—measures meant to boost domestic demand in the world’s second-largest economy.

Former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Seán FitzPatrick has launched a High Court action aimed at permanently preventing his trial before Dublin Circuit Criminal Court from going ahead, the Irish Times reported. Mr FitzPatrick is facing a number of charges including making a misleading, false or deceptive statement to auditors and of furnishing false information from 2002 to 2007. The trial has been scheduled to begin on October 5th, however he claims he cannot get a fair trial due to the large volume of adverse publicity published and broadcast about him.

Germany has saved €100 billion since 2010 because its borrowing costs have fallen during Europe’s debt crisis – savings that outweigh the cost of the crisis to the German economy, an economic think tank has reported, the Irish Times reported. Investors have fled instability in the euro zone for the safety of German bonds since 2010, pushing down interest rates on those bonds. Paying less interest has helped the government save more than 3 per cent of gross domestic product, the Halle-based Leibniz institute for economic research said.

Russia’s economy shrank the most since 2009 after a currency crisis jolted consumer demand, while a selloff in oil threatens to drag the country into a deeper recession. Gross domestic product contracted 4.6 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier after a 2.2 percent decline in the previous three months, the Federal Statistics Service in Moscow said on Monday, citing preliminary data. That was worse than the median forecast for a 4.5 percent slump in a Bloomberg survey of 18 analysts.

Ukraine is preparing to meet international creditors in San Francisco this week as the war-torn country warns it is prepared to impose a debt moratorium in September unless a restructuring deal is struck, the Financial Times reported. According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance, the meeting on Wednesday represents the last opportunity for the two sides to reach full agreement in advance of a $500m bond due to mature on September 23.

Shares in Dutch engineering services firm Imtech tumbled more than 40 percent on Monday after it said it was trying to preserve as much of its remaining business as possible after its Germany subsidiary, its largest, filed for insolvency last week, Reuters reported. Dutch newspaper de Telegraaf, citing an internal Imtech email, said on Monday that the company had instructed employees to halt payments to suppliers and subcontractors. Imtech spokeswoman Dorien Wietsma declined to comment on the report, repeating that "all options are open" for the company.

Eurozone creditor governments raised fresh concerns about the viability of a new Greek rescue package on Monday despite hopes from Athens that an agreement to unlock vital rescue funds was inching ever closer, The Telegraph reported. Greece's benchmark stock exchange closed up 2pc on Monday, at 690.24, while the banking index, comprising the four major lenders, rose 8.3pc to 299.08. Shares rose amid reports that negotiators were on course to secure an agreeement by the end of the week and the country's beleaguered banks could receive a capital injection later this month.

South Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co Ltd said on Monday it would sell non-core assets, and shut down or exit non-essential units as part of restructuring after a multi-billion dollar loss in the April-June quarter, The Economic Times reported. Daewoo Shipbuilding late last month reported a provisional second-quarter operating loss of 3.03 trillion won ($2.61 billion), citing construction delays on offshore projects such as oil and gas rigs.

Negotiations to secure a third bailout deal in time to prevent Greece from defaulting this month on bonds owned by the European Central Bank appeared to advance after weekend-long meetings between officials from Athens and the country’s creditors, The Wall Street Journal reported. Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos and Economy Minister George Stathakis met Sunday for several hours with representatives from the four institutions overseeing the rescue program, the European Commission, International Monetary Fund, ECB and the eurozone’s own bailout fund.