Headlines

As eurozone leaders argued over the fate of Greece, Mario Draghi was watching their every move with mounting anxiety, the Financial Times reported. As president of the European Central Bank he is responsible for the Greek banks’ main lifeline — €89bn in emergency loans that have kept the lenders from collapse. Mr Draghi stopped increasing these credits — called emergency lending assistance (ELA) — last month, when radical Greek premier Alexis Tsipras broke off negotiations and launched his controversial referendum.

At the height of the frenzy for Chinese stocks, just about every company was a winner, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. An online gaming start-up was valued at $7 billion. Shares in a fireworks company that had moved into finance shot up 300 percent. A struggling property developer was transformed into a stock market darling, just by changing its name to suggest it was an Internet company.

The developer of the unfinished $3.5 billion Baha Mar mega resort in the Bahamas has accused China Construction America of cutting power to the work site, inflating expenses and trying to steal documents stuffed in suitcases, U.S. court filings show. China Construction America, a unit of China State Construction Engineering Corp Ltd, denied the allegations, saying in a statement on Friday the developer is trying to deflect attention from its own mismanagement of the troubled project.

The company that previously held the Irish franchise for the Iceland chain of grocery stores will apply to the High Court next Monday for an examiner to be appointed to give it protection from its creditors, the Irish Times reported. ACCHL, previously known as Aim Cash & Carry, recorded a collapse in its revenues after Iceland took back the franchise and bought Aim’s seven stores in late 2013. Iceland subsequently announced a plan to open 50 stores here under its own management.

Drydocks World has called in the American financial group Citibank to help it refinance its US$2.3 billion of debt, The National reported. DDW, under the chairmanship of Abdulrahman Al Saleh, the director general of the Dubai Department of Finance, has hired the restructuring advisers at Citi’s Middle East unit, which is based in the emirate, to seek a better deal from its creditors. The marine engineering group, part of the Dubai World conglomerate, sealed a deal in 2012 to push back maturities on $2.3bn in two tranches.

Only a day after grim predictions of financial and social collapse in Greece, a scramble appeared underway to work out the details of a new bailout package to bring the country back from the brink of falling out of the euro, the International New York Times reported. As details of the new offer emerged, it appeared that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was capitulating to demands on harsh austerity terms that he urged his countrymen to reject in the referendum last Sunday, like tax increases and various measures to cut the costs of pensions. But Mr.

Mexican homebuilder Homex on Thursday said it had emerged from bankruptcy proceedings and looked forward to resuming business operations, Reuters reported. A court in Culiacan approved the company's bankruptcy plan, the company said in a statement. In May, Homex announced it had agreed a deal with creditors to restructure its debt. Homex, whose shares have not traded since February 2014, has struggled with a heavy debt load and slumping home sales.

On a cruise round the Mediterranean, Domingo Cavallo, Argentina’s economy minister in the run-up to the country’s dramatic economic collapse in 2001, was bemused when he was unable to use his credit card during a brief stop-off on Greek soil last week, the Financial Times reported.

As euro zone leaders wait for details on Greece’s last-chance proposal for a new bailout deal, several have taken a hard line toward Syriza’s claim that austerity measures, as they stand, are unacceptable to the Greek people, Bloomberg News reported. Those feelings have been simmering for months. After all, people in Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy have all dealt with harsh austerity measures implemented following debt crises. If these countries had to swallow the bitter pill of austerity, the argument goes, so should Greece. But are the situations comparable?

Ghana’s president has blamed the country’s economic malaise on government overspending just as the bottom fell out of the market for its main commodity exports, the Financial Times reported. In a reversal of fortunes that provides a cautionary tale for other natural resource-dependent emerging nations, John Mahama said “wage overruns” — a reference to public sector salaries that accounted for 72 per cent of government expenditure in 2012 — and huge energy subsidy bills fuelled the fiscal deficits that crippled Ghana’s economy.