Headlines

Brazilian telecom firm Oi SA proposed amendments to its restructuring plan on Friday, urging creditors to extend new loans and to get higher bids for assets put on the block. Creditors will vote on the proposed changes on Sept. 8, as Oi plans to exit bankruptcy protection by May 2022, roughly six years after starting the process, Reuters reported. “After lots of talks, we concluded that the plan needed some more flexibility than initially foreseen,” Chief Executive Rodrigo de Abreu said in an interview.

The British government is trying to find a way to offer state-backed loans to debt-laden companies owned by private equity groups, in the hope of rescuing a swath of the British high street, the Financial Times reported. The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy department (Beis) wants to help private equity-backed groups that employ large numbers of people, such as PizzaExpress, Prezzo or Merlin, the owner of Legoland, without breaching EU state aid rules, according to four people involved in the process.

The EU labour market shrank by a record amount in the second quarter, as the number of people in employment fell by 5.5m, the Financial Times reported. The 2.6 per cent quarterly reduction reported by Eurostat on Friday underlined the dramatic impact coronavirus has had on the region’s job market. Many companies have shed large numbers of staff or placed a significant portion of workers on government-backed furlough schemes.

Japan’s economy shrank by 7.8 percent in the second quarter of the year, posting its worst performance on record as the coronavirus pandemic ground economic activity to a near halt in April and May, the International New York Times reported. The nosedive in output in the three-month period — an annualized drop of 27.8 percent — was the third straight quarter of contraction for Japan, the world’s third-largest economy after the United States and China.

Austria has experienced plenty of scandalous bank failures in the past decade, not least at Hypo Alpe Adria, the house lender of the late Freedom Party leader Joerg Haider, Bloomberg News reported. Yet the fraud that brought down tiny Commerzialbank Mattersburg im Burgenland AG raises questions for financial regulators and auditors that have uncomfortable echoes of the Wirecard AG debacle in neighboring Germany.

Indian lenders rushed to be included in a case involving recovery of $19 billion of past dues from telecom companies after a Supreme Court judge questioned banks’ right to sell insolvent carriers’ airwaves, Bloomberg News reported. Lenders led by State Bank of India in a plea said any move to ban bankrupt companies such as Aircel Ltd. and Reliance Communications Ltd. from selling airwaves, leased from the government, will sink their insolvency resolution process and can cause serious prejudice to lenders, according to people aware of the filing.

Thai Airways International Pcl shares were suspended by the bourse on Friday after auditors declined to sign off on its financial statements for the six months to June 30, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Auditor Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Jaiyos Co Ltd said it could not reach a conclusion on the statements due to issues including a lack of liquidity and debt defaults which created "material uncertainty" and may affect the value of assets and liabilities.

China’s multi-year clampdown on its peer-to-peer lending industry has whittled the number to just 29 platforms, down from about 6,000 at its peak, according to the nation’s top banking regulator, Bloomberg News reported. The crackdown, which is likely to be completed at the end of this year, has left investors with more than 800 billion yuan ($115 billion) in unpaid debt from failed platforms, Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said on China Central Television on Friday. Regulators, together with the police, will try their best to recoup the money, he said.

National Australia Bank Ltd on Friday urged customers at high risk of default on their loans to sell their properties sooner rather than later, as it reported ballooning credit impairment charges during the quarter, Reuters reported. Property prices in Australia fell for a third straight month in July but home prices nationwide still stand about 7% higher than in the corresponding month last year.

Lenders to bankrupt Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom) and Reliance Telecom Ltd (RTL) have told the Supreme Court that spectrum is an essential and integral part of asset against which banks grant loans to telecom firms, Mint reported. This is contrary to the government’s stance that spectrum is national property and cannot be sold under insolvency proceedings.