Lenders to Essar Steel Ltd. have decided to assess bids submitted by Numetal Mauritius and ArcelorMittal India on their individual merit, Bloomberg News reported. The committee of creditors will not challenge an order passed by the National Company Law Tribunal last week, directing them to review bids submitted by the two companies. The CoC decision was taken at the end of deliberations that spanned over two days as lenders assessed the tribunal’s order, three people in the know told BloombergQuint on the condition of anonymity.
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Resources Per Country
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- New Zealand
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- Papua New Guinea
- Philippines
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- Sri Lanka
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- Turkey
- Uzbekistan
- Vanuatu
- Vietnam
China is setting up a special court in Shanghai to deal with the complex financial cases that are rising apace with the deepening of the country’s financial system, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Shanghai Financial Court is expected to start operations by the end of August after Chinese lawmakers on Friday gave their approval. The court will merge special financial tribunals in the current Shanghai court system that have handled a spiraling number of finance-related civil cases—179,000 last year, after rising an average of 51% each year since 2013—officials said.
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General Motors and South Korea have agreed to inject $4.35 billions into the carmaker’s loss-making local arm to keep it afloat after it came close to seeking bankruptcy protection, Reuters reported. GM has been struggling to turn round the debt-laden unit, which has been hit by GM’s exit from Europe where it used to export many of its cars. GM Korea has announced plans to close one of its four South Korean plants and let go 2,600 workers.
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A Chinese property developer whose owner bought a stake in SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. is piling up overdue loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars, as a government campaign to control debt starts to squeeze China’s property sector, The Wall Street Journal reported. Zhonghong Holding Co. disclosed in a regulatory filing Monday that it defaulted on more than 1.1 billion yuan in borrowings, doubling in the past five weeks a pile of overdue debt that totaled 2.27 billion yuan ($360 million).
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One of Noble Group’s largest shareholders is suing the troubled commodity trader in a last-ditch bid to stop its chairman pushing through a controversial restructuring, the Financial Times reported. Abu Dhabi-based Goldilocks Investment, which took a 8.1 per cent stake in the company last year, said on Wednesday it had filed two lawsuits in Singapore to block Noble from progressing the restructuring — which would see existing shareholders retain just 15 per cent of the company — as well as seeking an injunction against its April 30 annual general meeting.
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HNA Group Co.’s bonds are rebounding as the Chinese conglomerate steps up asset sales. But its debt remains large despite efforts to pay it down, prompting some observers to recommend selling the notes. HNA and its subsidiaries face record bond repayments in the second half. That puts even more of a focus on the group’s total debt, which rose to at least 637.5 billion yuan ($101 billion) by November, as it releases results as soon as this week, Bloomberg News reported.
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Dogus, one of Turkey’s biggest companies, has neither denied nor confirmed widespread reports that it is restructuring its debt, the Financial Times reported. But economists and analysts fear the company could be a canary in the coal mine for Turkey’s corporate debt problems. For years, economic growth has been fuelled by cheap international credit. Corporates took out large loans in dollars or euros. But with the currency sliding, the cost of servicing that debt is rocketing.
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India’s revamped bankruptcy process is in full swing and investors from Blackstone Group LP to Oaktree Capital Group LLC are salivating over an estimated $210 billion of stressed assets that are up for grabs, Bloomberg News reported. But the courtrooms handling the thousands of bankruptcies are lacking a key component: Judges. Ten benches with a combined 26 judges and technical staff are hearing more than 2,500 insolvency cases, the latest official data show. Based on the workload a year ago, researchers estimated India needs about 80 benches over five years.
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How bad would liquidity have to get for one of China’s largest companies to dump about $13 billion in assets in less than four months? Investors may find out and get a sense of whether the disposals are enough when debt-laden HNA Group Co., the once-high-flying conglomerate, releases its results as soon as this week, Bloomberg News reported. The 2017 annual report will provide the most extensive details yet of HNA’s financial distress before it began offloading property from Hong Kong to New York, and selling shares in companies from Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. to Deutsche Bank AG in 2018.
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It wasn’t so long ago that Suruga Bank Ltd. was seen as a model for how Japanese lenders can survive in an era of rock-bottom interest rates and weak loan demand. The regional bank was hailed for generating the best loan margins in the country, thanks to its focus on individual borrowers who were shunned by its risk-averse competitors. Now, Suruga has come unstuck for giving credit to investors in failed real estate investment projects, prompting Japan’s financial regulator to investigate the company’s lending practices, Bloomberg News reported.
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