Emergency meeting for Greece, China ferry disaster, more Fifa fallout

The daily briefing “FirstFT” from the Financial Times.

German chancellor Angela Merkel hosted an emergency summit in Berlin on Monday night to thrash out differences between Greece’s creditors and to accelerate efforts to reach a deal that could prevent Athens from defaulting on its debt.

Greece is due to make a EUR300m repayment to the International Monetary Fund on Friday, followed by a further EUR1.2bn of IMF payments coming due over the next fortnight.

Despite reports that those in attendance – including IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, European Central Bank chairman Mario Draghi, French president Francois Hollande and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker – agreed they must work with “real intensity”, analysts remain gloomy about the prospects for a deal.

Should it miss the payments, Greece would have set itself apart from other “deadbeat” countries in that its crisis will have been caused by its own debt and spending, a financial crisis and austerity measures, rather than war, revolution and violence. (FT, Reuters, Bloomberg)

In the news

Ferry disaster A Chinese ferry with 458 people aboard sank on the Yangtze river on Monday night after crew reported that it had been caught in a sudden storm. According to state media, as of Tuesday morning only 12 people had been rescued and more than 400 people were missing.

Charles Kennedy dies The former Liberal Democrat leader has died at his home aged 55,reports Sky News. (Sky)

Fifa fallout US authorities believe Jerome Valcke, Fifa’s secretary-general and a top aide to Sepp Blatter, authorised a $10m transfer at the centre of a bribery scheme that was used to secure South Africa as the host of the 2010 World Cup. (FT)

China’s Portuguese play Anbang Insurance and Fosun International are competing for Portugal’s Novo Banco, in a EUR4bn-plus deal that would be the biggest European financial services acquisition by a China-based group, according to people familiar with the matter. (FT)

Record US dealmaking Mergers and acquisitions in the US hit a monthly record of $243bn in May, soaring past previous highs seen during the peak of the dotcom bubble and the zenith of the debt boom that led to the 2008 financial crisis. (FT)

Yen tumbles The Japanese currency weakened in Asian trade to JPY125 to the US dollar for the first time since 2002. The yen’s depreciation of about 5 per cent over the past fortnight has underpinned one of the Japanese stockmarket’s longest winning streaks on record. (FastFT)

Merrill fined The Securities and Exchange Commission has fined Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit $11m for failing to keep proper records of stock available to borrow, after irregular short selling trades were carried out over at least six years. (FT)

HSBC’s big cut Europe’s largest bank could unveil job cuts of between 10,000 and 20,000 at its strategy day on June 9. The bank is on a cost-cutting drive as it looks to boost earnings, and has raised the prospect of separating its UK retail banking business and shifting its headquarters from London. (Bloomberg, FT)

Apple takes on Spotify The company that revolutionised the music business with iTunes will debut a subscription streaming service at its developers’ conference next week, putting it in competition with services such as Pandora and Spotify. (WSJ)

Food for thought

Fifa’s realpolitik Gideon Rachman explores what the scandal-plagued governing body of global football can tell us about global power. “The Fifa struggle has become a highly visible test-case of one of the central questions in world politics – is the US still powerful enough to call the shots in global organisations? Or is the sole superpower’s grip on global institutions slipping?” (FT)

Would you believe It took about $150bn in today’s money to put a man on the moon in the 1960s. This is the same amount we are said to need to save the world from climate change. (FT)

Top nosh Spain’s El Celler de Can Roca has topped the list of the world’s 50 best restaurants, according to Restaurant magazine. But the awards are facing increasingly loud criticism about its voting methodology. (Bloomberg, NYT, The World’s 50 Best)

Why your team needs an Aussie To win an NBA championship, even basketball superstars require the right surrounding parts. Two Australians have emerged as indispensable piecesduring the playoffs as their teams prepare to meet in the finals series, which begins on Thursday. (WSJ)

Counting lives Ferguson, Baltimore, South Carolina and countless places in between have brought into sharp relief the troubling trend of US police shooting and killing black people. But there is no national database of police shootings and many agencies do not report the data. The Guardian crunches the numbers and finds that law enforcement is killing people at twice the rate calculated by the US government, and unarmed African-Americans are twice as likely as unarmed whites to be shot by police. (The Guardian)

UK housing’s property puzzle As more people struggle to buy or even rent a home, critics say the government should ensure there is adequate supply. (FT)

Video of the day

Acropolis now The end of the road is looming for Greece and its colossal can of debt maybe cannot be kicked any further. (FT)

This article is published in collaboration with The Financial Times. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: FirstFT is the Financial Times’ editors curated free daily email of the top global stories from the FT and the best of the rest of the web.

Image: A Greek and an EU flag flutter outside the Foreign Ministry in Athens. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis.