Headlines

The French government and the European Commission have reached an agreement in principle on fresh financial support for Air France, which has been hurt by a drop in air travel since the start of the pandemic, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday, Bloomberg News reported. “It’s very good news for Air France, it’s very good news for the whole French aviation sector,” Le Maire said in an interview on LCI television. “It was a long and difficult negotiation, but I think we’ve reached a good agreement” with EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

Romanian low-cost airline Blue Air will resume its plans put on ice during the pandemic. The company plans to issue bonds within several months after it exits the pre-insolvency procedures, hopefully in July 2022, and to list its shares on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) within two to three years, the company's CEO Oana Petrescu said in an interview, Romania-Insider.com reported. Romania's biggest airline by the number of passengers transported, Blue Air, initiated last July the preventive agreement, a mechanism that gives a company facing cash flow problems a chance to avoid insolvency.

Indonesia’s biggest listed clothing firm Sri Rejeki Isman has appointed Helios Capital and Assegaf Hamzah & Partners to represent the company in its debt restructuring process, Bloomberg News reported. The company, known as Sritex, has been trying to extend a dollar loan’s maturity by two years to January 2024. The loan was announced in 2019 and had a deal size of $350 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

To defend against accusations by Washington, D.C., and others that it doesn’t play fair on trade, Beijing could point to the banks. Chinese leaders have been steadily lowering the barriers they had erected around the country’s vast financial system, giving Wall Street and European lenders a greater shot at winning business in the world’s second-largest economy. Now the walls are going up again, the New York Times reported. New Chinese rules have sharply limited the ability of foreign banks to do business in the country, making them less competitive against local rivals.

Argentine Finance Minister Martin Guzman said finalizing a plan with the International Monetary Fund to repay $45 billion in debt likely won’t happen by May or June, Bloomberg News reported. Changing the terms of a previous repayment program would require the support of nations like the U.S., China, Germany, Japan and France, the finance minister said in an interview with CNN Espanol. The Argentine government is unable to pay the IMF the $45 billion required between September 2021 and 2024, he said.

Stung by the collapse of Asia’s top independent oil trading firm, some global banks have teamed up to seek the personal assets of the family behind Hin Leong Trading, which has left creditors on the hook for billions of dollars, Reuters reported. As part of what sources say is the biggest legal case in living memory in Singapore, liquidators and creditors are hunting for assets from the city-state to China to Australia belonging to the Lim family, after the Singapore-based company was wound up in March.

The International Monetary Fund approved a $2.34 billion financing package for Kenya to support the country’s Covid-19 response and address an urgent need to reduce debt vulnerabilities, Bloomberg News reported. Approval of the so-called Extended Credit Facility and Extended Fund Facility will enable immediate disbursement of about $307.5 million for budget support in the East African nation, the Washington-based lender said Saturday in an emailed statement. “Kenya was hit hard at the onset by the Covid-19 pandemic,” the IMF said.

Germany’s banking private banking association said on Monday that it had paid out around 2.7 billion euros ($3.17 billion) to more than 20,500 Greensill Bank customers as part of its deposit guarantee scheme after the bank collapsed last month, Reuters reported. The banking association said only a few customers had yet to receive compensation under the protection fund, which protects individuals but not institutional investors. Read more.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday he was very hopeful the government could find a solution for Liberty Steel which is scrambling to secure capital after the collapse of its biggest lender Greensill Capital, Reuters reported. The steelmaker, which employs 3,000 people in Britain and is part of the GFG Alliance conglomerate, has been rocked by the failure of Greensill, which had extended many billions of dollars in loans.

China will deliver 550 billion yuan ($84 billion) in tax cuts to help support the economy’s recovery, a move that could also damage local governments’ finances further, Bloomberg News reported. The government will lower taxes for small and micro-sized businesses and offer tax breaks for companies in advanced manufacturing, state media reported Wednesday, citing a State Council meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang. That’s on top of record tax and fee cuts last year.