The head of the three Mozambican state-owned companies at the center of an audit into their previously undisclosed debts was defiant after the probe criticized his leadership, Bloomberg News reported. Antonio do Rosario, in a letter seen by Bloomberg that he authenticated, said Kroll LLC auditors personally attacked him in the report that was published on June 24.

A group of key Mozambique bondholders laid down terms to the embattled government ahead of restructuring talks, calling on it to revoke guarantees on loans taken on by two state-owned companies, Bloomberg News reported. The southern African nation, which defaulted on its only Eurobond in January, should also liquidate the two firms -- ProIndicus and Mozambique Asset Management -- as well as a third, the tuna-fishing company known as Ematum, the so-called Global Group of Mozambique Bondholders said.

The International Monetary Fund had suspicions about Mozambique’s hidden loans almost a year before the government finally admitted it had undisclosed debt, email exchanges between the fund and the government show. The communications, seen by Bloomberg and confirmed by the IMF, show for the first time how the fund sought to uncover the state’s concealment of its borrowings as far back as May 2015, Bloomberg News reported. The government’s eventual disclosure in April 2016 of more than $1 billion of previously hidden loans led the fund and 14 donor countries to freeze aid last year.

Kenya's central bank said on Friday it planned to extend the receivership of Imperial Bank by a year to help finalise a deal with a strategic investor to take a stake in the bank, Reuters reported. The regulator also said it had granted a licence to a new locally owned bank, Mayfair Bank Limited, the second such licence since 2015, when it imposed a moratorium on approving new lenders.

Mozambican state companies have failed to account for about a quarter of the proceeds of $2 billion in loans being investigated, according to a report by Kroll LLC that creditors said was needed for debt restructuring talks to start, Bloomberg News reported. “At least $500 million of expenditure of a potentially sensitive nature remains unaudited and unexplained,” Kroll said in the report, commissioned last year by Mozambique’s attorney general. Credit Suisse Group AG and VTB Bank PJSC were paid almost $200 million in fees for arranging the loans, the New York-based investigator said.

Kenya’s government agreed to swap loans it provided to Kenya Airways Ltd. for equity, a conversion that may give the state a controlling stake in the national carrier, Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich said. The government will also guarantee 77 billion shillings ($745 million) of the airline’s debt to lessors and domestic banks, enabling Kenya Airways to extend its loan repayments to 10 years, Rotich told reporters Tuesday in the capital, Nairobi, Bloomberg News reported. The government has yet to decide what amount of loans it will swap, he said.

A state-run company in Mozambique skipped $134 million in payments on a government-guaranteed loan, the third time this year the southern African nation failed to meet its obligations as a standoff with creditors blocks debt restructuring talks, Bloomberg News reported. Mozambique Asset Management, one of three state-owned companies that took out undisclosed loans worth about $2 billion, failed to make the payment due May 23, Rogerio Nkomo, a spokesman for the Finance Ministry, said by phone.

Kenya Airways expects to unveil a big capital restructuring in the next two months as part of its turnround strategy after returning to operational profitability following four years of losses, the Financial Times reported. Mbuvi Ngunze, who steps down as chief executive next week, said the airline, which slashed its loss before tax by 61 per cent in the year to March 2017, “is not out of the woods yet”.

Kenya Airways is about to conclude its capital restructuring, its chairman said on Wednesday, edging closer to putting past financial woes behind it, the carrier's chairman said, Reuters reported. The airline, part-owned by the state and AirFrance KLM, sank into the red four years ago after tourism slumped following a spate of attacks in Kenya by militants from the Somalia-based al Shabaab Islamist group. Last year the carrier had negative equity of 35 billion shillings ($339 million), Reuters data showed, and the business was sustained by shareholder loans.

Mozambique’s parliament ratified a law that provides state guarantees for previously hidden loans of two state-owned companies that sparked a debt crisis in one of the world’s poorest countries, Bloomberg News reported. Lawmakers from the ruling Front for the Liberation of Mozambique approved the state accounts for 2015, which included guarantees for loans worth $1.12 billion that ProIndicus and Mozambique Asset Management took out in the prior two years. Opposition members left the legislature in protest when the vote was taken late Wednesday.