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Three small investment funds have started buying defaulted Venezuelan bonds as hopes of a change of government are fading and the South American nation is proposing a restructuring, according to sources and documents, Reuters reported. Canaima Capital Management, headquartered on the English Channel island of Guernsey, Uruguay-based Copernico and Cayman Islands-based Altana have bought heavily discounted bonds with face value of hundreds of millions of dollars, according to eight finance industry sources in Caracas, New York, Miami, Madrid and London.

Sometimes, letting go is the hardest thing to do. China’s most ambitious companies have yet to learn that lesson, Bloomberg News reported in a commentary. The corporate sector has gone on a global shopping spree in recent years, buying expensive assets by raising new debt. Now, struggling to repay their loans, some are unwilling to part with their purchases, even as they walk to the brink of bankruptcy. The end result can only be untimely defaults. Consider Tianqi Lithium Corp., China’s largest lithium carbonate producer and a key supplier to the buzzing electric vehicle industry.

The international community must do more to tackle the economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Monday, publicly calling on the World Bank to accelerate its lending to hard-hit African countries, Reuters reported. Some of the key events of the virtual and elongated annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank take place this week, with the most pressing issue how to support struggling countries. “We are going to continue to push to do even more,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said during an online FT Africa summit.

Bad debts could become more of a headache for Turkish banks when credit expansion slows, which threatens to reverse a decline in the ratio of souring loans, according to European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Bloomberg News reported. “The NPL issue is an elephant-in-the-room,” Roger Kelly, EBRD’s Istanbul-based lead regional economist, said in an interview. A boom in credit extension increases the risk of taking on riskier customers, and means many of the loans are still relatively young, he said.

The Ugandan High Court on Wednesday ruled that a syndicated loan granted to a local company was illegal in a shock judgment that banks warned could lead to a spike in defaults on $1.5 billion of debt, Bloomberg News reported. The case relates to a loan Diamond Trust Bank Kenya Ltd. provided to a Kampala-based firm with interests spanning real estate to agriculture, using its Ugandan subsidiary as the agent.

A consensus is emerging among G20 nations to extend a debt-payment freeze next week for poor countries for an additional six months, a French finance ministry source said on Friday, Reuters reported. Members of the Group of 20 economic powers and the Paris Club of creditor nations agreed in April to suspend until the end of the year debt payments owed to them by poor countries to free up resources for tackling the coronavirus outbreak. G20 finance ministers are due to take a decision on what to do after the end of the year when they hold an online meeting next Wednesday, the source said.

Spanish companies already endured one of Europe’s toughest lockdowns earlier this year as the country became one of the region’s epicentres for the virus, Reuters reported. A fresh surge in infections is compounding the hit to the economy, which is expected to shrink by more than 11% in the year as a whole. Yet fiscal aid to prop up the economy only amounted to 3.7% of GDP against 8.3% in Germany, the Brussels-based think-tank Bruegel estimates. That left small Spanish companies rushing to take up short-term loans as their only lifeline.

Time and money are running out for Lebanon. Foreign reserves have dropped far below what the state already deemed “dangerous levels” when it defaulted on its huge debt in March, meaning it cannot afford to keep subsidies for long, Reuters reported. Leaders in power for decades have yet to enact a financial rescue plan, a year after huge protests against them swept the country, and they have failed to secure aid from foreign donors.

Up to £26bn in expected defaults and fraud losses on bounce back loans is a very big number, the Financial Times reported. The National Audit Office’s estimate is a measure of the banks’ success as government functionaries shelling out cash to rescue more than 1m small businesses during the pandemic. It could also be a measure of the banks’ potential failure. After all, £26bn out of £43bn in bounce back loans is a lot to pursue in a year or so when payments start to fall due. That won’t make debt collectors popular. Debt collecting hasn’t made banks popular in the past.

Illimity is evaluating potential bids on 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) of impaired bank loans, a senior executive at the Italian bank said, as disposals resume after the hiatus caused by the coronavirus crisis, Reuters reported. Italy’s 340 billion euro market for problem loans is Europe’s biggest. After more than halving soured debts on their balance sheets in recent years to tackle the legacy of the previous slump, Italian banks are now bracing for an expected wave of defaults caused by COVID-19. Market activity froze at the height of the healthcare emergency.