Headlines

Mexican airline Aeromexico on Tuesday posted a net loss of $130.38 million in the third quarter under the strain of the coronavirus pandemic, yet said passenger demand had begun to revive, Reuters reported. The drag on profits was considerably narrower than in the prior quarter, when Aeromexico posted a net loss of $1.19 billion.

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) that are facing insolvency shouldn’t be subject to the same rules as other businesses, the Law Council of Australia said. The peak body of Australia’s legal profession said that Australia should move away from a one-size-fits-all approach under the Corporations Act of 2001, CRN reported. The Law Council said it was supporting Treasury’s draft exposure bill, which provides an alternative regime that allow SMBs to restructure, or transition to liquidation in a more cost-effective way.

The Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking (JSCCIB) will spend three months monitoring the debt restructuring progress of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), on a case-by-case basis, after the Bank of Thailand's debt relief measures in the second phase expire tomorrow, the Bangkok Post reported. Though the central bank will not prolong debt relief measures, the regulator encourages financial institutions to help borrowers who cannot pay debt normally to enter debt restructuring.

Zambia’s government said on Tuesday it had adjourned meetings with creditors on a proposal to defer payments on its Eurobonds to Nov. 13 due to a lack of quorum, pushing the copper producer further towards a protracted debt overhaul, Reuters reported. The meetings had been scheduled for Tuesday morning and were expected to gauge support for a delay in interest payments on $3 billion-worth of three outstanding dollar-denominated bonds until April. Two-thirds of holders of Zambia 2022 and 2024 bonds and three-quarters of its 2027 issue were required to vote.

Petra Diamonds has abandoned plans to sell the business in favour of a debt-for-equity restructuring, it said on Tuesday, sending its shares lower because of the deal's dilutive effect on existing stakeholders, Reuters reported. The London-listed company, which mines diamonds in South Africa and Tanzania, had put itself up for sale in June as part of the restructuring process but has received no viable offers, it said.

Union Properties PJSC is restructuring debt and trimming costs to weather a slump in Dubai’s real estate market, Bloomberg News reported. “We are focusing on restructuring our balance sheet, and all our efforts will be directed to reduce our accumulated losses in the past,” Vice Chairman Fathi Ben Grira said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. The company restructured 946 million dirhams ($258 million) of debt in August. Chronic oversupply has battered property values and rents over the past six years in Dubai.

Turkish banks suspended a plan to create an asset-management firm to take over their problematic debt in a bet that they’d be better off recovering some of the loans themselves rather than unloading them at a discount, Bloomberg News reported. Lenders are reluctant to sell non-performing loans for less than what they’re worth when they can restructure the borrowings and collect what is owed, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified because the matter is sensitive. The plan can be revived if there’s another economic shock, the people said.

Business groups have called for added supports for companies forced to close once again under the Government’s measures to try to suppress Covid-19 in Ireland, warning that tens of thousands of jobs are at risk, The Irish Times reported. Chamber leaders around the country have called on the Government to introduce supports for impacted businesses quickly and to use the time “wisely” to put in place the appropriate infrastructure to support local economies to re-open safely.

A month-on-month rise in the number of corporate insolvencies in England and Wales may indicate that businesses which were healthy and profitable pre-COVID-19 are now starting to struggle, East Midlands Business Link reported. This is according to the Midlands branch of insolvency and restructuring trade body R3 and comes on the back of figures published by the Government’s Insolvency Service which show that the number of companies entering insolvency increased to 926 in September 2020 compared to August’s figure of 784.

There is much to admire in China’s recovery. Between the second and third quarters, its economy expanded by 4.9 per cent. It is unique among the world’s largest economies in that the IMF expects it to avoid a contraction this year, the Financial Times reported. That owes much to Beijing’s success in stamping out Covid-19, along with the country’s manufacturing prowess. Yet, digging into the numbers, the picture is not quite as rosy as it may seem. Long before the pandemic, the world’s second-largest economy looked dangerously unbalanced.