Headlines

Restructuring consultancy Alvarez & Marsal has yet to receive all the information it has requested to conduct a forensic audit of Lebanon’s central bank, according to three sources familiar with the matter, Reuters reported. The Lebanese government hired the turnaround specialist this year to audit the central bank as the country grapples with a financial meltdown on a scale it has never seen before. Alvarez & Marsal declined to comment.

Demand for British retail and office space contracted sharply during the third quarter and the outlook for the year ahead has worsened as working and shopping patterns change during the COVID-19 pandemic, a survey showed on Thursday, Reuters reported. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said 78% of chartered surveyors viewed the commercial property market as being in a downturn, up a little from 76% in the second quarter.

An anomaly in credit insurance on Europcar Mobility Group could prove lucrative for some traders as the French rental-car firm seeks to restructure 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) of debt, Bloomberg News reported. The cost of buying Europcar’s bonds and credit-default swaps in a combined trade has risen to 110% of the notes’ face value, indicating that traders expect they’ll get more than par if the insurance pays out, according to Jochen Felsenheimer, who trades both markets as managing director at XAIA Investment GmbH. He doesn’t have a position in Europcar.

Zambia has reached a deal to defer debt repayments that were due this month on a loan from the China Development Bank (CDB), Zambia’s government said, without giving the size of the loan or the debt repayments that were due, Reuters reported. Zambia owed CDB roughly $391 million at the end of last year - about a tenth of the $3 billion it owes Chinese entities - according to the finance ministry. It was not clear whether the loan in question covers all of this debt or a fraction of it. China holds about a quarter of Zambia’s foreign debt.

China Evergrande Group has taken to seeking loans at above-average interest rates in the shadow banking market, where caution even there over its cash flow hints at an increasingly fraught effort to reduce the property sector's biggest debt, Reuters reported. The developer, which owed 835.5 billion yuan ($125 billion) at June-end, has been shopping around for cash among small banks and private trusts at high rates to fund developments, as proposed limits to the permitted size of real estate debt stymie big-bank lending.

South Africa’s government said on Thursday it wanted its national airline flying again in the first half of next year, after giving it a 10.5 billion rand ($650 million) bailout in the mid-term budget, Reuters reported. The Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) said the latest cash injection meant a restructuring plan for state-owned South African Airways (SAA), which has been in a form of bankruptcy protection since December, can now go forward.

Malaysia's AirAsia X Bhd plans to revise its $15.3 billion debt restructuring plan to address concerns raised by a creditor as its cash is running out fast, people with direct knowledge of the matter said, Reuters reported. The budget carrier is seeking to reconstitute the $15.3 billion of unsecured debt into a principal amount of 200 million ringgit ($48 million) and have the rest waived.

The European Central Bank is expected to resist pressure to unveil fresh stimulus measures on Thursday but it will likely pave the way for action in December as fresh restrictions aimed at containing the coronavirus pandemic fuel fears over a new recession, Reuters reported. Having already lined up unprecedented firepower to prop up the 19-member currency bloc’s economy, the ECB is in no hurry to act, as its ongoing bond buying could keep markets calm well into next year. Policymakers also appear keen to push governments to take the lead.

Nok Air looks set to be allowed to restructure under court supervision, after nobody raised objections during a court hearing today, according to a 27 October filing to the Stock Exchange of Thailand, FlightGlobal reported. The Thai budget carrier says the order on its business rehabilitation petition will be issued at 09:00 on 4 November by Thailand’s Central Bankruptcy Court, after which Nok will provide further details to the stock exchange. The court had accepted the company’s petition on 30 July and set the hearing for 27 October.

SA’s second-largest diamond producer has noted a one-fifth increase in rough diamond prices as its three SA mines recovered from the lockdown, but it’s not enough to stave off a massively dilutive debt restructuring plan, Business Day reported. London-listed Petra Diamonds, which is engaged in a plan to address a $650m bond that falls due in 2022 and which would dilute existing shareholders to a mere 9% stake in the miner, reported a decline in production in the quarter to end-September, the first of its financial year. Consolidated debt was $688m at the end of September.