Bloomberg Steinhoff International Holdings NV’s annual advisory fees climbed 35% last year, pushed by costs related to a deal the retailer reached with creditors to skip debt repayments. Steinhoff’s shares collapsed in late 2017 when the owner of Conforama in France and Pep stores in Europe and Africa became engulfed in an accounting scandal. Locked in a battle for survival, ...

Bloomberg The Trump administration’s response to the allegation Russia offered bounties for killing American troops makes the US vulnerable to adversaries regardless of whether it’s true, former US National Security Advisor John Bolton says. “What it tells the Russians is that we are in disarray and ripe for this kind of provocation, not just in Afghanistan but in many, many ...

Bloomberg Russian President Vladimir Putin is on course to secure a resounding endorsement of his bid to extend his two-decade-long rule potentially up to 2036, as the Kremlin faces criticism for its heavy-handed efforts to marshal support. Putin, a former KGB colonel who came to power in 2000, is already the longest-serving Russian leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. The ...

Bloomberg Minutes after reports broke that China passed a sweeping national security law for Hong Kong, Carrie Lam stood in front of a backdrop of the city’s iconic skyline for a weekly press briefing. With legions of reporters clamouring to hear details of the law that could reshape the financial hub’s future, it quickly became clear that Hong Kong’s leader ...

Bloomberg Taiwan is strengthening ties with the government of Somaliland in a bid to bolster its dwindling number of allies. While the move falls short of full diplomatic recognition, the last time Taiwan managed to persuade a country to establish ties with it rather than China was with the Caribbean island of St Lucia in 2007. China claims Taiwan as ...

Bloomberg Sweden’s government has initiated a commission to investigate its controversial approach to the Covid-19 pandemic. Sweden has taken a different path compared to most European countries by keeping much of society open and by recommending social distancing and self-isolation rather than imposing a blanket lockdown. That strategy has resulted in a much higher death rate than in neighboring countries, ...

Bloomberg The scale of Boris Johnson’s challenge to revive the UK economy was laid bare on Wednesday as house prices posted their first annual decline since 2012 and firms reported a record slump in sales. The prime minister has unveiled part of his plan for boosting the UK’s recovery, reconfirming his commitment to long-term investment in some of the country’s ...

Bloomberg German unemployment surged in June as one of country’s leading economic research institutes warned of a slower-than-expected economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Another sharp gain last month has taken the number of job losses in the second quarter to 678,000 and the total to just below 3 million, a threshold not broken since 2011. Yet more redundancies were ...

Bloomberg Hedge funds that bought credit insurance on Wirecard AG debt are among those in line for a windfall of as much as $212 million after the disgraced German payments company filed for insolvency last week. A committee of traders ruled that Wirecard has gone through a so-called bankruptcy credit event, triggering payouts to holders of credit-default swaps. These contracts ...

Bloomberg Factories across the euro area recorded a stronger performance than initially reported in June, with consumer-goods producers growing again. But despite countries easing restrictions and life slowly returning to normal, output continued to contract and demand — especially among exporters — remained weak. In a sign that the pandemic has been inflicting lasting damage on the economy, all of ...