Italy

Troubled steelmaker Lucchini said on Tuesday it planned to ask India's JSW Steel to raise its offer of less than $100 million for the Italian company's core assets in Piombino on the Tuscan coast, Reuters reported. Lucchini, Italy's second-largest steel plant by capacity, was previously owned by Russia's Severstal, but it was declared insolvent in 2012 and placed under special administration. JSW so far has made the only binding offer.

The Italian economy is struggling to emerge from a prolonged recession and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi needs now to firmly push through his bold reform agenda to address Italy's structural weaknesses and unleash the country's growth potential while continuing to reduce its huge debt load, the International Monetary Fund said Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported. In its annual staff report completed at the end of August after bilateral consultations with Rome, the IMF forecast a 0.1% drop in Italy's gross domestic product in 2014, highlighting the challenges that Mr.

Italy is pushing for new rules to monitor economic reforms across the eurozone, in an attempt to reassure other European countries of its commitment to tackling its biggest structural problems and rally them towards greater flexibility on budgetary policy. Pier Carlo Padoan, Italy’s finance minister, told the Financial Times that “benchmarks” to measure and compare structural reforms would be both “disciplining” and “confidence building”. “This would be extremely useful for Europe and for Italy,” Mr Padoan said.

An Italian court has upheld a ruling by a U.S. court for Italy's Parmalat to pay Citibank $431 million in damages in a case relating to the dairy group's bankruptcy more than 10 years ago, lawyers for the U.S. bank said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Parmalat collapsed in 2003 after the discovery of a 14 billion euro ($18 billion) hole in its accounts. At the time it was Europe's biggest bankruptcy and its demise wiped out the savings of more than 100,000 small investors.

Italy fell back into recession for the third time since 2008, data showed today, building up pressure on Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to accelerate the pace of economic reforms while keeping the country's accounts in order, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. Gross domestic product in the euro zone's third-largest economy dropped 0.2 percent in the second quarter of 2014 from the previous three months, national statistics institute Istat said today, citing preliminary data.

Creditor banks of Alitalia have reached agreement on how to share the burden of a debt restructuring for the Italian airline, UniCredit Chief Executive's Federico Ghizzoni said on Monday, Reuters reported. The green light from the banks, together with an agreement between Alitalia and the unions on job cuts, are key factors for the airline to seal the final terms of a rescue deal with Abu Dhabi's Etihad.

ArcelorMittal is looking into making an offer for Italy’s second biggest steel producer Lucchini, and a proposal is expected to be made later in July, GantDaily.com reported. Lucchini was placed under “special administration” after it was declared insolvent in 2012. The procedure aimed to save huge companies and avoid heavy job losses. The company, formerly owned by Russia’s Severstal, was badly hit by the 2008 recession that has reduced Europe’s steel demand by around 25 percent.

The presidency of the European Union is largely ceremonial, rotating every six months among the bloc’s 28 nations. But Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy means to use its new presidency as a platform from which to seek relief for his country’s debt-saddled economy, the International New York Times reported. On Wednesday, the second day of his nation’s six-month turn, Mr. Renzi, 39, said that the bloc’s fiscal rules should put less emphasis on debt and deficit targets and do more to stimulate members’ economies.

A federal appeals court in Chicago said auditor Grant Thornton LLP must again face a lawsuit over its alleged role in the collapse of Italian dairy company Parmalat SpA, while lamenting that its decision puts the nearly 10-year-old case on the brink of starting anew, Reuters reported. Wednesday's decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an April 2013 dismissal of the case by U.S. District Judge John Darrah in Chicago. The appeals court ordered that the case be moved to a state court in Cook County, which includes Chicago, where Grant Thornton is based.

Europe’s centre-left leaders, led by Italy’s Matteo Renzi, are pushing for a loosening of the EU’s tough budget rules as the price for their support of Jean-Claude Juncker to be the next European Commission president, a drive that risks reopening the debate over eurozone austerity ahead of a summit next week, the Financial Times reported. The move threatens to become particularly contentious in Germany, where the government’s deputy chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the junior coalition partner Social Democrats, unexpectedly backed Mr Renzi’s drive this week.