Headlines

China’s economy started the second half of the year on a weak note, posting disappointing trade and factory-price data in July amid pressure from slack demand at home and abroad, The Wall Street Journal reported. Exports in July slid 8.3% from a year earlier, reversing a gain of 2.8% in June, customs data released Saturday showed. Imports fell for the ninth month in a row, dropping 8.1%, after a decline of 6.1% in June.

Hundreds of millions of tax dollars are flooding into exchequers across the world, as governments offer evaders a last chance to own up to undeclared accounts, the Financial Times reported. Taxpayers with funds stashed offshore are coming forward voluntarily in their tens of thousands ahead of new transparency rules that will allow tax authorities to probe secret foreign accounts. The Paris-based OECD said last week that many transgressors were facing “the last window of opportunity” to disclose such information.

Berlin's new international airport could face further delays following the insolvency of Dutch engineering group Royal Imtech's German division which has been working on the project, the airport's operator said on Friday. Imtech Deutschland GmbH & Co filed for insolvency on Thursday after failing to secure credit from lenders, adding to a list of problems at its parent company, whose shares fell more than 40 percent to a record low.

Nearly a quarter of Britain's small and medium-sized businesses have been pushed into financial crisis because of late payments, it has emerged, The Telegraph reported. In a new poll of 1,000 business owners, 23pc reported a brush with insolvency due to unpaid invoices. The research, which was commissioned by electronic invoicing network Tungsten, revealed that half of all invoices owed to small firms are overdue. The average small-to-medium-sized enterprise is owed £40,857 in unpaid invoices and £20,937 of that total is overdue.

Even if they had been compiled by his own spin-doctors, Portugal’s latest unemployment figures could hardly have been better for Pedro Passos Coelho, the country’s centre-right prime minister, the Financial Times reported. The last batch of labour market numbers to be published before a general election in October showed the biggest quarterly drop in the country’s jobless rate for at least 17 years — falling by 1.8 percentage points in the second quarter to 11.9 per cent.

China has spent $144bn to bolster the country’s fragile stock market since June, Goldman Sachs has estimated amid investor fears that authorities might run low on firepower to draw on should stocks resume their recent sharp descent, the Financial Times reported. The figure is less than half of the roughly $322bn war chest that the coalition of state financial institutions — known as the “national team” — has at its disposal, the bank reckons. Concern that the national team is short of capital or is preparing to exit its investments has dominated investor sentiment in recent weeks.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and French President Francois Hollande agreed on Thursday that a new bailout for Greece could and should be agreed soon after August 15, Reuters reported. The two men were speaking in Egypt on the sidelines of a ceremony to inaugurate the New Suez Canal, the Greek prime minister's office in Athens said. Hollande, speaking to reporters at the inauguration, said: “The objective is for the negotiations on the program … to be concluded at the end of August. We know it’s difficult but we must make sure that the conditions are met, in a good spirit.

The German unit of Dutch engineering group Royal Imtech NV has filed for insolvency after failing to secure credit from lenders, adding to a list of problems at the parent and sending its shares down over 40 percent to a record low, Reuters reported. The announcement of Imtech Deutschland GmbH & Co's insolvency came hours after the company said it was "considering all options" in the wake of the subsidiary's liquidity crisis.

The Bank of England has signalled that it is unlikely to raise interest rates this year, as the strong pound and further falls in commodity prices keep inflation “muted” in the near term, The Telegraph reported. Sterling fell by more than a cent against the dollar and euro on Thursday as the minutes of its August interest rate meeting showed just one member of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted to raise rates this month. Markets expected more dissent within the nine-member panel.

Ukraine’s Eurobonds slid the most in two months as renewed signs of discord between the nation and a Franklin Templeton-led creditor group increased the likelihood of default. The sovereign’s $2.6 billion of debt due July 2017 fell 1.31 cents to 55.44 cents on the dollar at 5:28 p.m. in Kiev, the biggest drop since details emerged on June 11 that Ukraine was asking for a 40 percent writedown on principal.