Qantas Airways Ltd. and Singapore Airlines Ltd. are traveling in opposite directions when it comes to the coronavirus crisis, with the former emerging strongly thanks to its buoyant home market and the latter mired in trouble with record losses as it can barely fly anywhere, Bloomberg News reported. While not out of the woods just yet, Qantas said Thursday it expects revenue from routes within Australia to almost double in the six months through June from the second half of last year.
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Resources Per Country
- Afghanistan
- Armenia
- Australia
- Azerbaijan
- Bangladesh
- 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
- Uzbekistan
- Vanuatu
- Vietnam
A cyberattack on Ireland’s health system has paralyzed the country’s health services for a week, cutting off access to patient records, delaying Covid-19 testing, and forcing cancellations of medical appointments, the New York Times reported. Using ransomware, which is malware that encrypts a victims’ data until they pay a ransom, the people behind the attack have been holding hostage the data at Ireland’s publicly funded health care system, the Health Service Executive. The attack forced the H.S.E. to shut down its entire information technology system.
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Concern over China Huarong Asset Management Co.’s financial health is deepening among domestic investors, threatening to worsen a selloff offshore, Bloomberg News reported. The firm’s thinly traded 19 billion yuan note due 2022 fell 12% to 70.2 yuan on Thursday, according to Bloomberg-compiled data, while its 3.54% domestic bond maturing in November dropped 24% to 75.3 yuan, both on pace for record lows. The company’s dollar bonds also declined, with a 3.75% bond due 2022 falling 5.5 cents on the dollar to 73.6 cents, its weakest level in more than a month.
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China is — yet again — looking to deal with its mountain of hidden debt. An absurd solution has emerged: just make it go away. But much like a landfill, it won’t ever quite disappear, according to a Bloomberg commentary. Earlier this month, Zhao Quanhou, a top researcher at the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences, which is affiliated with the finance ministry, proposed that Beijing should dissolve some of its off-balance sheet debt by converting it into legal, or statutory, debt.
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Indonesia's exports racked up their strongest rise in 11 years in April, boosted by a surge in prices of key commodities such as palm oil and copper, though the unexpectedly robust figure is not expected to change the central bank's policy settings, Reuters reported. The resource-rich nation's shipments rose 51.94% on a yearly basis to $18.48 billion, marking the sharpest increase since 2010 and beating a forecast 41% rise in a Reuters poll. The export value was the highest since August 2011.
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Thai Airways International Pcl’s creditors approved the airline’s debt restructuring plan, paving the way for payment extension and unpaid interest waiver on at least 170 billion baht ($5.41 billion) of its debt, Bloomberg News reported. The plan was backed by 91% of creditors at an online meeting, Kitipong Urapeepatanapong, chairman of Baker & McKenzie in Bangkok, the airline’s legal adviser, said by phone on Wednesday.
Suraksha Asset Reconstruction Company, one of the two bidders for Jaypee Infratech under the insolvency procedure, has called upon the troubled real estate developer’s creditors and insolvency resolution professional (IRP) to follow a “fair and unbiased process”, a day before they meet to consider the resolution proposals, the Economic Times reported.
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Thailand plans to borrow an additional 700 billion baht ($22.3 billion) to fund measures to counter the worst Covid-19 outbreak to hit Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, Bloomberg News reported. A meeting of the cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha on Tuesday approved the new borrowing plan from the finance ministry, the people said, declining to be identified before a public announcement.
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A consortium of Indian banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI) on Tuesday moved a step closer in their attempt to recover debt from loans paid out to Vijay Mallya's now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines after the High Court in London upheld an application to amend their bankruptcy petition, in favour of waiving their security over the embattled businessman's assets in India, the Tribune of India reported.
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BlackRock gave it money. So did Goldman Sachs. Foreign investors had good reason to trust Huarong, the sprawling Chinese financial conglomerate. Even as its executives showed a perilous appetite for risky borrowing and lending, the investors believed they could depend on Beijing to bail out the state-owned company if things ever got too dicey, the New York Times reported. Now some of those same foreign investors may need to think twice. Huarong is more than $40 billion in debt to foreign and domestic investors and shows signs of stumbling.