Headlines

Brazilian appliance retailer Casa & Video filed for an initial public offering on Friday, according to a preliminary prospectus on the securities industry watchdog CVM website, Reuters reported. The Rio de Janeiro-based company has hired the investment banking units of Itau Unibanco Holding SA, Banco Santander Brasil SA, Citigroup, BTG Pactual SA and XP Investments to manage the offering, confirming a previous Reuters report. The company did not disclose in the filing a pricing range for its shares nor the pricing date.

Vijay Mallya, who is due to be extradited to India, has applied for "another route" to be able to stay in the UK, the embattled liquor tycoon's barrister representing him in bankruptcy proceedings in the High Court here confirmed in the court for the first time, the Deccan Herald reported.

Online fashion retailer Boohoo Group Plc is set to acquire collapsed British department store group Debenhams in a cut-price deal that will result in the closure of the group’s remaining department stores, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, according to Reuters. The purchase price is expected to be about 50 million pounds ($68.39 million) and a deal could be announced in the next few days, the newspaper reported, citing two people with knowledge of the transaction.

Millions of barrels of Venezuelan heavy crude, embargoed by the U.S., have been surreptitiously going to China, Bloomberg News reported. The cat-and-mouse games that avoid detection and sanctions include ship-to-ship transfers, shell companies and silenced satellite signals. But there’s another aspect to the dodge. It involves “doping” the oil with chemical additives and changing its name in the paperwork so it can be sold as a wholly different crude without a trace of its Venezuelan roots.

Lufthansa is losing 1 million euros ($1.2 million) every two hours, “a significant improvement” over the low point of the COVID-19 crisis, the German airline group’s chief executive said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Lufthansa, which was racking up losses at twice that rate at one point last year, has cut costs and pared back flights to those generating positive cash thanks to buoyant cargo rates, CEO Carsten Spohr said in a webcast interview hosted by Eurocontrol. The group last year received a 9 billion euro bailout in which the German government took a 20% stake.

The Irish High Court said on Friday it had granted an extension to Norwegian Air’s creditor protection, as requested by the examiner overseeing the process, Reuters reported. The extension to Feb. 25 was granted after a lawyer representing the Irish examiner told the court that the examiner believed the budget carrier had a reasonable prospect of survival. Norway’s government backed the airline’s survival plan on Thursday, saying it would stump up cash if private investors did too. “I will grant that application and extend the time for reporting...

A Swiss court on Friday convicted the French-Israeli mining magnate Beny Steinmetz on charges of corrupting foreign public officials and forging documents, in a trial over his successful bid to reap lavish iron ore resources in the West African nation of Guinea, the Associated Press reported. Steinmetz, one of the richest people in Israel, was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay a $56.5 million fine. The case centered on alleged payouts of millions of dollars to a former wife of an ex-president of Guinea, Lansana Conté, who died in 2008.

If one of the main reasons coronavirus infection rates remain so high is that people refuse to self-isolate, paying them to stay home could make a difference. But doing so isn’t just expensive, it risks some unintended consequences, according to a Bloomberg commentary. The U.K. Department of Health is reportedly recommending a plan to pay workers 500 pounds ($683) to self-isolate, according to a leaked document detailed by the Guardian on Friday.

Norway backed Norwegian Air’s survival plan on Thursday as Industry Minister Iselin Nyboe said that the government had no intention of being a shareholder but would stump up cash if private investors did too, Reuters reported. The heavily indebted budget carrier, which has been forced to ground all but six of its 138 aircraft due to the coronavirus crisis, asked the government for help last week. Norwegian was granted bankruptcy protection by courts in Ireland and Norway last year as it seeks to shed much of its debt. It plans to end its long-haul service.

Europe’s downtown office buildings are empty, and malls and main streets are deserted, yet the biggest landlords are staying afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic thanks to robust central-bank buying of bonds backed by property debt, the Wall Street Journal reported. Some worry that the policy is obscuring long-term pain should workers and shoppers never return in their pre-coronavirus numbers.