The lira crisis has faded from the headlines, but the Turkish government’s stopgap measures to halt the hemorrhaging will not fix what ails the economy, a Bloomberg View reported. There are other crises around the corner: Foreign capital flows financing the country’s massive current account deficit have dried up following the row between President Donald Trump and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the fate of Andrew Brunson, the American pastor jailed by Turkish authorities. The heavily indebted corporate sector, especially real-estate and construction companies, are hanging by a thread.
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Varde Partners Inc. and Aditya Birla Capital Ltd. are creating a joint venture to invest as much as $1 billion in distressed assets in India, according to people familiar with the transaction, who asked not to be identified because the information is private, Bloomberg News reported. The U.S. investment firm and Indian financial services provider, helmed by billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla, are expected to deploy this sum over three years, one of the people said. The venture, which will scout for deals of up to $100 million, may be announced as early as this week, the person said.
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Turkey’s central bank took steps to undo some of the emergency support it provided to its banks in recent weeks, reviving investor concerns over the nation’s financial stability as the Turkish lira continued its slide against the dollar, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ratings firm Moody’s also rattled investors by downgrading 18 Turkish banks on fears they will face growing difficulties in difficulties in refinancing foreign-currency loans. “There is a heightened risk of a downside funding scenario,” the ratings agency said in a research note.
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Indian tycoon Anil Ambani has declared a moment of “transformation” for his troubled business empire, after selling a large Mumbai power business for $2bn in his quest to pare a hefty debt burden, the Financial Times reported. Announcing the sale of Reliance Infrastructure’s Mumbai distribution business to Adani Transmission on Wednesday, Mr Ambani said the total proceeds of Rs188bn ($2.7bn) would slash the leverage of his flagship business.
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Noble Group Ltd.’s foes aren’t going away. Less than 24 hours after the commodity trader won shareholder approval for its $3.5 billion debt-for-equity deal, long-standing critic Michael Dee said the revamped company will struggle to recover and shouldn’t be allowed to list shares in Singapore, Bloomberg News reported. “I really don’t believe that we’re going to be in any different situation,” Dee, a former senior managing director at Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte, said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Tuesday.
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The German government is considering providing emergency financial assistance to Turkey as concerns grow in Berlin that a full-blown economic crisis could destabilize the region, German and European officials said. While the talks are at an early stage and may not result in any aid, the possibilities being discussed range from a coordinated European bailout similar to the kind deployed during the eurozone debt crisis to project-specific loans by state-controlled development banks and bilateral aid, The Wall Street Journal reported.
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Bank of Cyprus has struck a deal to sell a €2.7bn non-performing loan portfolio in a “transformative” deal for the bank that was one of the highest-profile casualties of the eurozone crisis, the Financial Times reported. The agreement to sell the loan portfolio to Apollo Global, the US-based private equity firm, for €1.4bn comes as European banks have ramped up sales of bad loans following pressure from the ECB to clean up balance sheets.
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China’s consumer finance industry is sagging under an intensifying campaign of regulation, Bloomberg News reported. That could be a problem for an economy that’s relying on domestic demand to sustain growth amid the trade war with the U.S. The government has started a fresh round of checks on thousands of peer-to-peer lending sites, Bloomberg News reported last week. Meanwhile, shares of U.S.-listed cash-loan provider Qudian Inc. fell 12 percent on Friday after a separate Bloomberg report that it would lose access to customers through Ant Financial’s Alipay app.
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Noble Group Ltd won approval from shareholders on Monday for a $3.5 billion debt restructuring plan that should ensure the survival of what was once Asia’s biggest commodity trader, Reuters reported. Faced with the prospect of the company’s insolvency, shareholders reluctantly backed a debt-for-equity swap that will leave them owning just 20 percent of the business, while handing majority control to a group of creditors comprised mainly of hedge funds.
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