President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party on Tuesday submitted a bill to parliament to tighten Turkey’s bankruptcy law aimed at preventing what the government says is abuse of the regulation by some healthy companies, Reuters reported. A section of the current law is designed to give struggling firms temporary protection from creditors. Since going into effect eight months ago, it has seen a surge in applicants, officials and bankruptcy lawyers say, as a currency crisis has pushed the inflation rate to 25 percent and shaken the economy.
Resources Per Country
- Afghanistan
- Armenia
- Australia
- Azerbaijan
- Bangladesh
- Bhutan
- Brunei
- Cambodia
- China
- Cook Islands
- Cyprus
- Fiji
- Georgia
- Hong Kong
- India
- Indonesia
- Japan
- Kazakhstan
- Kyrgyzstan
- Laos
- Macau
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Micronesia
- Mongolia
- Myanmar
- Nepal
- New Zealand
- North Korea
- Pakistan
- Papua New Guinea
- Philippines
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Sri Lanka
- Taiwan
- Tajikistan
- Thailand
- Turkey
- Turkmenistan
- Uzbekistan
- Vanuatu
- Vietnam
In India, crises move slowly. We’ve known for years that the state-controlled banks that dominate the financial sector were groaning under the weight of bad loans, a Bloomberg View reported. For years, though, the government successfully kicked the can down the road. All those assets haven’t been accounted for yet, the banks haven’t been fully recapitalized, the bankruptcy process isn’t working to schedule, yet somehow the banks are still chugging along. India’s luck may be about to run out.
Noble Group Ltd is set to appoint Ian Potter, a former senior banker at Morgan Stanley, as its next chairman in a few weeks, just as the commodities trader seeks to complete its $3.5 billion debt restructuring, sources with knowledge of the matter said on Monday, Reuters reported. Singapore-based Potter has been working with Noble in an advisory capacity for the past few months, said one of the sources, who declined to be named as Singapore-listed Noble has not made any official announcement about its next chairman.
Debt-laden Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Service (IL&FS) has initiated steps to explore the sale of certain assets, as it attempts to move forward on a restructuring plan for the wider group, the company said in a statement on Monday, Reuters reported. The firm said IL&FS’ board has decided to publicly solicit expressions of interest for its stakes in both IL&FS Securities Services, and ISSL Settlement & Transaction Services, which both play in the financial services space.
CBL Insurance has finally entered liquidation amid accusations of massive solvency breaches, Insurance Times reported. Nathan Gedye, lawyer for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, said CBL Insurance’s balance sheet was insolvent by $86.6m in 2013, $102m in 2014, $104m in 2015 and $98.6m in 2016, according to The New Zealand Herald. The company’s solvency position as at December 2017 was 25 per cent compared to the ratio required by direction of the Reserve Bank of 170 per cent and the required 100 per cent under licence, a shortfall of $136.5m.
A group of countries including the US, Brazil and China has objected to EU plans for splitting up sensitive import quotas with Britain after Brexit, in the latest sign of how big trading powers are stepping up their demands about how the UK’s departure should be handled, the Financial Times reported.
New banks loans in China likely fell in October due to a seasonal lull but were still well ahead of historical trends as policymakers urge lenders to keep cash-starved firms afloat as the economy slows, a Reuters poll showed. Banks likely extended 862 billion yuan ($196.56 billion) in net new yuan loans in October, a traditionally weaker month due to long holidays, according to the poll, which surveyed 32 analysts, Reuters reported.
Toshiba Corp. said Thursday it would liquidate its U.K. nuclear business and sell its U.S. natural-gas business, taking a combined loss of nearly $1 billion. The moves are intended to clear away legacy problems after Toshiba went through waves of restructuring in the past three years that included the bankruptcy of its former Westinghouse Electric business in the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K. business—NuGeneration Ltd., known as NuGen—had sought to build what was planned as Europe’s largest new nuclear project in northwest England.
UniCredit SpA Chief Executive Officer Jean-Pierre Mustier’s turnaround plans hit a last-minute hurdle after the bank cut key targets and took a charge related to its Turkish bank, Bloomberg News reported. The lender surprised investors with an 850 million-euro ($972 million) charge to revalue Istanbul-based Yapi Kredi Bankasi AS and said it’s increasing funds to cover a potential settlement related to U.S. sanctions over Iran. The Milan-based bank also lowered targets for revenue and a key measure of financial strength this year and next, while keeping its 2019 profit target intact.
First came the sweeping government pronouncements. Then the flurry of actions, all aimed at shoring up China’s capital markets and rescuing struggling private companies. But are they working? Weeks into China’s latest campaign to support the world’s worst-performing major stock market and address record defaults, there have been some successes: equities are far less volatile and more companies are selling debt at a lower cost, Bloomberg News reported.