Headlines

The staff of the troubled Liberty Częstochowa steelworks in southern Poland received notice on Wednesday of a 40% cut in their August wages amid hopes that a buyer or new leaseholder will come forward before a September deadline, TVPWorld.com. The British-owned mill was declared bankrupt at the request of its creditors on July 25. The new, lower rates of pay will remain in place while a new leaseholder is sought to take control of the century-old mill. The receivers have set a deadline of September 1 for finding a new tenant or beginning the sell-off of its assets.

The risks still circling Sweden’s commercial real estate industry were laid bare late on Thursday when the debt crisis deepened for one of the country’s most high profile landlords, Bloomberg News reported. The Swedish Tax Agency filed a petition with a court for Oscar Properties Holding AB to be declared bankrupt, adding to a growing list of claimants that have sought insolvency proceedings against the former developer of luxury apartments.

Global burger chains to car manufacturers are increasingly feeling the pinch from a faltering recovery in the world's No. 2 economy, China, and are strapping in for a bumpy ride ahead, Reuters reported.

South Korea’s headline inflation picked up at a stronger-than-expected pace in July, reaccelerating due to higher prices for agricultural and oil products, after easing for three consecutive months, the Wall Street Journal reported. The benchmark consumer-price index rose 2.6% from a year earlier, following a 2.4% gain in June, the country’s statistics office said Friday. Compared with the prior month, the index rose 0.3% in July compared with the median forecast of a 0.2% increase. In June, it fell 0.2% from the previous month.

The Asian manufacturing recovery seems to have continued at the start of the second half of the year, with survey data signaling fairly healthy factory activity in July despite the continued threat of inflation and a pullback in demand, the Wall Street Journal reported. Purchasing managers index data from S&P Global showed that new order growth for the Asean region hit a 15-month high in July, improving for a seventh straight month.

U.K. retail footfall levels slipped in July, when consumers shifted their spending to holidays and leisure activities from shopping, according to a study, the Wall Street Journal reported. The number of visits to stores—comprising high-street shops, retail parks and shopping centers—for the four weeks ended July 27 fell 3.3% from the same period a year earlier, accelerating from a 2.3% decline in June, according to data from British Retail Consortium and Sensormatic Solutions IQ published Friday. The fall marked the 12th consecutive month of decline in U.K. store visits.

Ukraine has made a payment of about $200 million to holders of its GDP warrants, securities that weren’t part of a recent $20 billion eurobond restructuring agreement with private creditors, the finance ministry said, Bloomberg News reported. The payment comes after the finance ministry said in a statement in July that it intended to pay a consent fee in early August linked to $2.6 billion of outstanding warrants, as well as a deferred payment on the notes from 2021.

B.C.’s financial markets regulator on Wednesday called on Ottawa to make changes to federal laws so that fraudsters hit with steep fines still have to pay up even after declaring bankruptcy, the Vancouver Sun reported. Brenda Leong, chairwoman and CEO of the B.C. Securities Commission, said she would work with other provincial regulators to make the plea to Ottawa after Canada’s high court ruled administrative penalties, or fines, don’t survive bankruptcy while orders to pay back ill-gotten gains do.

A senior member of the Barclay family, which owns The Telegraph, has struck a confidential settlement with a leading private bank to avoid the threat of bankruptcy, The Telegraph reported. According to court filings, Investec has dropped a legal claim against Alistair Barclay after months of wrangling over almost £1m in unpaid debts. The settlement was submitted to the High Court in late July, two days before Mr Barclay was expected to appear before a judge. Details of the agreement have been kept private.

The founders of Byju’s have settled its Rs 158 crore payment arrears with the Indian cricket board, their counsel told the bankruptcy appellate tribunal Wednesday, as they sought to free the edtech firm from insolvency proceedings initiated on the sports body’s petition, the Economic Times of India reported. However, the Chennai bench of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) did not pass any order on Byju’s chief executive Byju Raveendran’s challenge to the insolvency proceedings, as a group of its U.S.