Headlines

Argentina’s newly restructured dollar bonds have slumped in value less than a month after a deal was finalised to postpone debt payments, as fears grow about the country’s economic health, the Financial Times reported. On August 31, Argentina clinched near-unanimous approval from its bondholders to restructure $65bn of foreign debt after months of sparring. The country’s sovereign bonds began trading this month, and have already fallen towards distressed levels.

Bickering among Indian government ministries and a deferred top court decision on the sale of bankrupt telecom companies’ rights to use mobile phone spectrum has derailed the resolution of the industry’s biggest bankruptcies, leaving banks waiting for $5.7 billion in payments, Bloomberg News reported.

G7 finance ministers on Friday backed an extension of a G20 temporary freeze in debt payments and recognized the need for broad debt relief in the future, while taking aim at G20 member China over a lack of transparency in its lending, Reuters reported. The G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), approved in April, is aimed at helping developing countries get through the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. So far, it has helped 43 countries defer $5 billion in official debt service payments.

While the world's second largest copper exporter has asked for a delay in paying its interest, Chad, Congo and Angola are also facing serious financial difficulties due to falling oil prices and the pandemic, The Africa Report reported. Will Zambia be the first African state unable to pay its debts after the coronavirus crisis? On 22 September, the world’s second largest copper producer asked its private creditors to defer payment of interest until April. This deferral, which represents a sum of $120m, concerns three bond issues totalling $3bn issued in 2012, 2014 and 2015.

More corporates are expected to descend into defaults as the business disruption brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic continuing to unfold resulting in significant financial and operational restructuring across many industries, The Malaysian Reserve reported.

Argentine companies are facing an increasingly difficult task to keep up with payments on dollar debt, hiking the risk of a wave of corporate defaults after the country tightened access to foreign currency to stem a sharp decline in reserves, Reuters reported. The central bank move, which pressured firms to restructure their debts and tightened individuals’ access to greenbacks, jolted local markets, pummeled bond prices and equities and heightened demand for black market dollars.

NMC has been placed into administration in the United Arab Emirates, allowing the troubled hospital group to meet September salaries by securing an additional $325m in funding, the Financial Times reported. During online hearings at the courts of Abu Dhabi’s international financial centre on Sunday, NMC Healthcare and related companies successfully applied for protection against enforcement of debt claims, in an emergency bid to sustain operations amid a second spike in coronavirus cases in the Gulf state.

Even as the European economy slumps into its deepest recession in modern history, the number of bankruptcies across the continent has fallen sharply as government subsidies and a temporary loosening of insolvency rules keep companies afloat, Reuters reported. During the first half of 2020, countries including Britain, France and Spain saw insolvencies fall by an estimated 20-40%year-on-year, official and private sector data show.

Angola’s central bank has ordered lenders to give their clients the option of converting their foreign-currency mortgages into kwanzas, Bloomberg News reported. The move aims to reduce the risk of default amid a sharp depreciation of the local currency of Africa’s second-biggest oil producer. Only bank customers whose income is paid in kwanzas qualify, the central bank said in a statement published on its website Wednesday.

India’s corporate affairs ministry has extended suspension of new bankruptcy filings for three months from Friday, a statement from the ministry said, Bloomberg News reported. Bankruptcy filings, that have been in progress from earlier this year, have been halted to help financially-strapped borrowers hit by the pandemic, stay out of court. The move comes as the government seeks to cushion an economy already contracting at the worst pace in decades from more damage. The move has been challenged by banks, already saddled with one of the worst bad-debt ratios in the world.