SoftBank has warned of a writedown of more than ¥1tn ($9.6bn) on investments held outside its huge Vision Fund, as the coronavirus crisis piles new pressure on founder Masayoshi Son’s bet on struggling WeWork, the Financial Times reported. The Japanese technology group’s widened loss forecast, announced on Thursday, came just two weeks after SoftBank flagged a ¥1.8tn blow to its $100bn, Saudi-backed technology fund, underscoring the depth of its exposure to the market turmoil sparked by the pandemic.
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Before the coronavirus, investors hungry for returns piled into risky corporate loans and bonds with precious little protection for creditors, Reuters reported. Now they’re frantically scouring the terms to see just what firms can get away with to survive the fallout. At the same time, firms starved of cash and funds thinking about lending to them are also poring over the fine print to see what room they have to shift assets away from other creditors, pay dividends or borrow more while staving off default.
Hontop Energy (Singapore) Pte Ltd, the trading arm of a Shandong-based refiner, is negotiating directly with banks on managing its debts after it withdrew its application for a debt moratorium, two sources with knowledge of the matter said, Reuters reported. Hontop submitted last month a request to the Singapore High Court to apply for a debt moratorium but the company subsequently withdrew it, they said. The company went into receivership in February after Singapore bank DBS, one of Hontop’s creditors, appointed accounting firm KPMG as the receiver.
Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd’s administrators have halted payments to bondholders and appointed Morgan Stanley to help sell the airline within four months, said a participant in a meeting of creditors owed nearly A$7 billion ($4.58 billion), Reuters reported. Administrators from Deloitte Australia were appointed this month to restructure and sell Virgin, making it the Asia-Pacific airline industry’s biggest victim of the coronavirus crisis.
Indonesian banks are looking to the government for additional stimulus measures to cope with a growing pile up of bad loans, as the coronavirus pandemic batters the economy, Bloomberg News reported. The country’s lenders are poised to add at least 556.6 trillion rupiah ($36 billion) of non-performing loans this year amid the unprecedented headwinds from the Covid-19 pandemic, according to PT Bank UOB Indonesia. That will push their soured debt ratio above 5%, from 2.8% at the end of January, the bank estimates.
International law firm Hogan Lovells is holding discussions with some bondholders of distressed airline carrier Virgin Australia, ahead of a first creditors meeting set for Thursday, Bloomberg News reported. Virgin Australia became Asia’s first airline to fall amid the coronavirus pandemic when it was placed under voluntary administration last week. With total debt of about A$6.84 billion ($4.4 billion) and more than 10,000 creditors, it’s one of Australia’s most high-profile debt restructurings.
India is considering a proposal to guarantee as much as 3 trillion rupees ($39 billion) of loans to small businesses as part of a plan to restart Asia’s third-largest economy, which is reeling under the impact of a 40-day lockdown, people with knowledge of the matter said, Bloomberg News reported. Under the proposal, small firms will be eligible to borrow an additional 20% of their credit limit, the people said, asking not to be identified as the discussions are private. The extra debt will be fully backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, the people said.
Singapore has long touted itself as the ideal home for a commodity trading house, with low taxes, light regulation and a view of one of the world’s busiest shipping channels, Bloomberg News reported. That hard-earned reputation is now taking a hit after a spate of financial scandals and failures, culminating in the dramatic demise of Hin Leong Trading Pte, the fabled marine fuel trader that has confessed to hiding about $800 million in losses and selling off oil inventories that were backstopping loans.
Singapore’s Hin Leong Trading Pte Ltd, one of Asia’s top oil traders, has applied for a court-appointed supervisor to manage the company and restructure billions of dollars of debt owed to multiple banks, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Friday, Reuters reported. “The company is in the process of applying for judicial management, and at the same time actively looking for strategic partners to raise cash,” said one of the sources with knowledge of the company’s plans.
Credit Suisse Group AG was stung by the collapse of Luckin Coffee Inc. in China following an accounting scandal, which led to a five-fold increase in Asian loan-loss provisions, Bloomberg News reported. The Swiss bank set aside 97 million Swiss francs ($100 million) for soured loans, primarily related to three cases, the largest of which was Luckin Coffee, according to a person familiar with the matter. The bank only referred to a “Chinese food and beverage company” in its earnings statement Thursday.