Headlines

Saudi Binladin Group plans to hire more advisers to accelerate one of the Middle East’s biggest corporate-debt revamps and tackle its estimated $15 billion debt pile, Bloomberg News reported. The kingdom’s top builder reached out to restructuring specialists across the Persian Gulf to assist with reorganizing the business, a spokesman for Jeddah-based SBG said in a text message. The consultants will assist Houlihan Lokey Inc., which was appointed in April to manage the group’s turnaround.

Lloyds Banking Group has announced its first round of job cuts since putting restructuring plans on hold at the start of the pandemic, the Financial Times reported. The UK’s largest high street lender said it would eliminate 865 roles, starting in November, which would be partially offset by the creation of 226 new positions elsewhere in the business. The reductions will not affect any branches, with the bulk of the losses focused on roles in Lloyds’ insurance and wealth division that were no longer needed after the creation of a new joint venture with Schroders.

Shares in Europcar tumbled 30% in early trading on Tuesday, after the car rental group, battered by the coronavirus pandemic as travel dwindles worldwide, said it aimed to try and restructure its debts, Reuters reported. Most companies exposed to the tourism sector and other industries hit the hardest by the crisis made it through the first few months of the pandemic, thanks in part to government aid, such as state-backed loans. But some are now reaching a crunch point which is forcing them to address their debt piles.

Struggling British fashion retailer New Look warned on Wednesday it would be forced to consider “less favourable alternatives” if unsecured creditors do not support its latest restructuring plan, potentially putting about 11,000 jobs at risk, Reuters reported. A New Look spokesman declined to comment on what the alternatives would be. However, analysts see administration or liquidation as likely.

Lebanon has started a forensic audit of the central bank, the Finance Ministry said on Wednesday, one of the steps donors want to see to help the nation claw its way out of a crippling financial crisis, Reuters reported. The government agreed in July to hire turnaround specialist Alvarez & Marsal to conduct the forensic audit, which typically involves close examination of an institution’s financial records and can potentially identify any misuse of funds.

Tullow Oil warned it risked defaulting on a debt facility if it does not resolve a potential liquidity shortfall, as the Africa-focused explorer slumped to a $1.4bn pre-tax loss for the first half of the year, the Financial Times reported. The London-listed company said on Wednesday that a “potential liquidity shortfall” threatened its ability to satisfy requirements at a “redetermination” next January of its reserves-based lending facility.

ED&F Man, one of London’s oldest commodities brokers, has restructured nearly $1.5bn of debt and raised an extra $320m in working capital from lenders, staving off a funding crunch, the Financial Times reported. A judge at the English High Court approved on Wednesday the company’s plan to switch its debt, held in credit facilities that mature in the next two weeks, into new secured loans and notes that come due over the next three years. The changes will be made through a scheme of arrangement.

One in five U.K. companies is a “zombie,” with profits only just covering debt interest payments, according to a report by an influential Conservative think tank, Bloomberg News reported.

Ethiopian Airlines is in talks over possible involvement in the rescue of flagship carrier South African Airways (SAA), the head of the airline told Reuters on Friday, Reuters reported. SAA hasn’t made a profit since 2011 and has been under a form of bankruptcy protection since late last year. Creditors have approved a restructuring plan, but the government needs to find at least 10 billion rand ($580 million) of funding for it to work.

Lebanon may write off two-thirds of its Eurobonds, and a fifth of the local debt, once it overcomes political differences hindering an economic overhaul, Citigroup Inc. says, Bloomberg News reported. The prediction comes as wrangling between government factions, banks and businesses, as well as the fallout from a deadly blast in Beirut, sidetrack the nation’s efforts to fix an economy already in disarray. So dire is the situation that Citigroup analyst Michel Nies says his projections are based on a favorable outcome and can hardly be called a base-case scenario.