China
Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney said global growth prospects are flagging due to a trade war pursued by Washington, creating new challenges for economic policy makers, The Wall Street Journal reported. “The pickup that we’ve been expecting in global growth has not transpired,” Mr. Carney said in an interview Friday on the sidelines of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual symposium in the Grand Teton National Park. “When we trace it, it’s not because of Fed policy. It’s not because of global financial conditions.
Qinghai Provincial Investment Group Co. has again missed a coupon payment on a dollar bond, a sign that a local government-led debt restructuring has yet to ease finances at the Chinese state-backed aluminum producer, Bloomberg News reported. The company has yet to wire funds to pay a coupon that came due Thursday on a $300 million 2020 note, according to a person familiar with the matter. It is in talks with financial institutions for funds to make a delayed payment, said the person who is not authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified.
The government of the Chinese city of Tianjin, the only shareholder of bankrupt Bohai Steel Group Ltd, is demanding that Bohai’s creditors and strategic investor implement a bankruptcy restructuring plan by the end of September, two creditor sources with direct knowledge of the matter said, Reuters reported. Bohai Steel, a former Fortune Global 500 company that was founded by the Tianjin municipal government in 2010 by merging four local steelmakers, collapsed in 2016 with more than 200 billion yuan ($28.4 billion) in unpaid debt, the biggest bankruptcy restructuring in China’s history.
HNA Group Co. repaid a dollar-denominated bond on Monday amid a report China’s provincial government offered to help the debt-laden conglomerate meet payments to its offshore creditors, Bloomberg News reported. HNA Group International, a unit of HNA Group, repaid a $300 million bond due Aug. 18, a company spokesperson told Bloomberg, saying “we remain committed to meeting our financial obligations.” REDD reported last week that the Hainan government would provide 1 billion yuan ($142 million) to HNA Group to help it repay that bond.
China’s central bank on Saturday unveiled a long-awaited reform to its interest-rate mechanism, a move aimed at reducing financing costs for businesses struggling with a cooling economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The People’s Bank of China said in a statement Saturday that it would replace existing benchmark interest rates with the Loan Prime Rate, which is based on real-world bank lending prices, as a reference for banks in pricing new loans.
As China moves toward a more market-based approach to determining the cost of money in its economy, one metric suggests corporate debt is going in the opposite direction, Bloomberg News reported. Some 17% of company bonds in the first half were sold at yields at least 50 basis points below rates in the secondary market, according to data from China Chengxin International Credit Rating Co. That’s a jump from 9.9% in the second half of 2018. Globally, only the most in-demand issuers can raise funds in line with where their existing debt is trading; almost everyone pays a premium.
Monthly sales of new energy vehicles in China fell in July for the first time in over two years, amid a yearlong slowdown in the world’s largest autos market, the Financial Times reported. Sales of NEVs, a category that includes both hybrid and fully electrified cars, declined by 4.7 per cent year-on-year in July to 80,000 vehicles, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said on Monday.
Thomas Cook, the UK tour operator, lost nearly a fifth of its market value after it confirmed it was seeking a further £150m on top of the £750m already secured as part of a rescue deal with its debtholders, the Financial Times reported. The Financial Times revealed on Friday that Thomas Cook was in talks with bondholders to secure the additional capital, as part of a bailout involving its largest shareholder, the Chinese conglomerate Fosun, and its lending banks.
China’s factory gate prices shrank for the first time in three years in July, stoking deflation worries and adding pressure on Beijing to deliver more stimulus as the economy sputters amid an intensifying trade war with the United States. With demand slowing at home and abroad, Chinese manufacturers are having to cut prices to keep market share, depressing profit margins and discouraging the fresh investment needed to get the economy back on its feet, Reuters reported. Falling prices for crude oil, iron ore and other raw materials are also playing a part.