Asia

Yildiz Holding AS, a debt laden Turkish food conglomerate, plans to sell its Jacob’s cracker unit and production facilities in the U.K. this year, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. The owner of McVitie’s digestives and Godiva chocolates may offload the entire business or a stake to an investor, the people said, asking not to be named because the talks are confidential, Bloomberg News reported. The company is working with Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. on the sale, the people said.

Turkey’s biggest buyer of soured debt expects sales of non-performing loans to increase by 33 percent this year as banks free-up capital to cope with a surge in corporate-debt restructurings, Bloomberg News reported. Lenders will probably sell about 10 billion liras ($1.9 billion) of bad-loan portfolios this year, Hayat Varlik Yonetim AS Chief Executive Officer Hilmi Guvenal said in an interview. Banks may receive up to 500 million liras this year from the sale of NPLs to asset managers such as Hayat Varlik, he said. There are 19 distressed-loan buyers in Turkey.

State Bank of India (SBI) said reports on Monday that it was considering taking heavily indebted Jet Airways Ltd to an insolvency tribunal to recover loans were “speculative”, and no such decision had been taken, Reuters reported. The loss-making Indian airline approved a rescue deal in mid-February after months of crisis-talks to plug a 85 billion rupee ($1.2 billion) funding hole. The plan includes selling a majority stake to a consortium led by SBI, the airline’s biggest creditor, at 1 rupee.

India’s Jet Airways Ltd said late on Friday that its shareholders approved a plan to convert existing debt to equity, paving the way for the troubled company’s lenders to infuse funds and nominate directors to its board. Jet’s board last week approved a plan by lenders, led by State Bank of India, for an equity infusion, debt restructuring and the sale or sale-and-lease-back of aircraft, Reuters reported. The plan will mean the lenders will have a bigger holding than any other shareholder.

For almost two years, the question has lingered over China’s market-roiling crackdown on financial leverage: How much pain can the country’s policy makers stomach? Evidence is mounting that their limit has been reached, Bloomberg News reported. From bank loans to trust-product issuance to margin-trading accounts at stock brokerages, leverage in China is rising nearly everywhere you look.

A Chinese state-backed borrower’s failure to make good on a payment on a dollar bond on Friday threatens to overturn assumptions that officials would step in to avert defaults by companies closely linked to local authorities, Bloomberg News reported. Qinghai Provincial Investment Group Co., an aluminum producer that was seen by some analysts as a bellwether for assessing government support due to its struggles to make payments on offshore debt last year, had failed to wire funds for a coupon payment due Feb. 22 as of late afternoon China time.

India’s property developers are finding it hard to borrow money, raising the prospect of a wave of debt defaults from the sector hitting shadow lenders that are trying to survive a funding crunch of their own, Bloomberg News reported. Developers have to repay about 1.29 trillion rupees a year on outstanding debt but generate less than half the amount in income that can be used for repayments, according to an analysis of about 11,000 companies by research firm Liases Foras.

Business tycoon Anil Ambani is planning to use a payment from his brother’s company and the sale of real estate assets to pay what he owes to Sweden’s Ericsson following a court ruling this week, a source familiar with the matter said. India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered Ambani’s Reliance Communications Ltd and two of its directors to pay Ericsson 4.5 billion rupees ($63.30 million) within four weeks or face a three-month jail term for contempt of court, Reuters reported.

International lessors have grounded more Jet Airways planes prior to potentially moving them out of India, as scepticism builds whether a state-led bailout of the carrier can clear their dues on time, sources familiar with the matter said, Reuters reported. The troubles at India’s Jet, which is saddled with a billion dollars in debt, have rekindled memories of Kingfisher Airlines’ collapse in 2012 that forced lessors to write off millions of dollars. Jet has defaulted on loans and has not paid pilots, leasing firms and suppliers for months.

In a remarkable warning to India’s elite, the nation’s top court said it will put one of the country’s most prominent business executives behind bars unless his group pays its dues, Bloomberg News reported. It’s the latest twist in a dispute that helped push billionaire Anil Ambani’s mobile-phone carrier into bankruptcy proceedings and cast an unflattering light on the Indian mogul, who’s the younger brother of Asia’s richest man.