Headlines

Banque du Caire, one of Egypt’s state-owned banks, was days from announcing its long-anticipated initial public offering in March. Then coronavirus scuttled the plan to float up to a quarter of its shares on the Egyptian Exchange, the Financial Times reported.

Borr Drilling, a Norwegian contractor of shallow water drilling rigs, warned on Monday that the company continued to face a “very challenging” financial situation after reporting $61.9 million in net loss for the third quarter, Reuters reported. The company said it continued talks with its creditors to improve its liquidity and it was ready to take part in the industry’s consolidation as a number of its peers filed for bankruptcy protection after the latest oil market crash.

The G20 summit ended last weekend with a call for “immediate and vigorous measures” to address the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Among these is a looming sovereign debt crisis, particularly in Africa, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Urgent and collective action is needed there to stave off that crisis and to maintain the invaluable social gains that the continent has made. In the early 2000s, multilateral debt relief provided a much needed reprieve for heavily indebted, poor countries around the world. Many African nations took the opportunity.

China’s Tianqi Lithium Corp said on Monday it had signed a letter with a syndicate of banks to extend by a month the maturity date on $1.884 billion of loans that were due for repayment at the end of November, Reuters reported. Tianqi, one of the world’s top producers of lithium chemicals used in electric-vehicle batteries, had repeatedly said its operations could be severely impacted if it did not repay the money, which was used to acquire a 23.8% stake in Chilean miner SQM in 2018, by the due date.

Lara Mustafa and Wassim Hachem are among thousands of university students caught up in Lebanon’s financial crisis, which started in 2019 with popular protests against leaders whom demonstrators blamed for corruption and mismanaging the economy, Reuters reported. An insolvent banking system, which had lent more than two thirds of its assets to the central bank and state, shut out all depositors from their dollar accounts, and Lebanon defaulted on its debts. The COVID-19 pandemic added to mass job losses and business collapses. Lebanon traditionally prides itself on its education system.

Corporate defaults are a growing risk for next year, although central bank stimulus and a COVID-19 vaccine will provide support, Russell Investments’ CIO for fixed income and EMEA said on Monday, Reuters reported. “You’ve got the vaccine news, you’ve got the stimulus in the background, you’ve got low interest rates,” Gerard Fitzpatrick told the Reuters Global Investment Outlook Summit. “On the flip side, there is definitely a rising risk relating to default risk. We’re not out of the woods relating to COVID.

Euro zone finance ministers agreed on Monday to move ahead with stalled changes to their ESM bailout fund to strengthen the resilience of the common currency area as the COVID-19 pandemic increases risks of future economic trouble, Reuters reported. After almost a year since their agreement “in principle” on widening the responsibilities of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), ministers from the 19 countries sharing the euro currency gave the deal a final go-ahead for ratification.

British tycoon Philip Green’s Arcadia fashion group has collapsed into administration, putting over 13,000 jobs at risk and becoming the country’s biggest corporate casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic so far, Reuters reported. Deloitte said late on Monday it had been appointed Arcadia’s administrator and would seek buyers for the group’s brands: Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Wallis, Miss Selfridge, Evans, Burton and Outfit. The group trades from 444 leased sites in the United Kingdom and 22 overseas.

The UK has spent more money fighting coronavirus than almost all comparable countries but still languishes towards the bottom of league tables of economic performance in 2020 and deaths caused by the virus, according to Financial Times research. On Wednesday, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility said the UK’s economy was set to shrink by 11.3 per cent in 2020, while the government would need to borrow £394bn to fund a shortfall in taxes and £280bn in public spending to fight Covid-19. Compared with the average of other G7 leading economies, the cost to the UK governmen

British banks are finalizing plans for outsourcing the recovery of billions of pounds in taxpayer-backed business loans issued during the Covid-19 pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. A consortium of lenders is expected to set up an entity that will oversee debt collectors tasked with chasing bad loans, people with knowledge of the matter said.