Headlines

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey’s banks are “doing fine.” But as the lira spirals ever lower, debt investors are taking a less sanguine view. The bonds of three Turkish lenders are trading at distressed levels, which shows the deteriorating opinion of investors on the ability of the companies to repay their obligations, even though the banks remain profitable and highly capitalized, Bloomberg News reported.

Lebanon may be in line for $298 million in emergency aid after the Beirut port blast, but the more than $30 billion that some estimate it may need to rebuild its shattered economy will not be forthcoming without reform, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Such change could be stalled by the resignation of Lebanon's government, while a financial rescue plan drawn up in April is likely to have to be reviewed and possibly even ditched by a new administration, two financial sources close to the plan said.

KBC Bank Ireland’s chief executive, Peter Roebben, has given his strongest indication that the bank may sell long-standing problem mortgages to avoid being forced by regulators to set aside more expensive capital against these loans, The Irish Times reported. “We have to keep the option of a potential sale of the deeper, longer-lasting historical non-performing book,” Mr Roebben said in a wide-ranging interview with The Irish Times.

The insolvency case of Era Infra Engineering, one of the 12 large loan default cases referred to National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for insolvency proceedings by Reserve Bank of India (RBI), is unlikely to see any resolution this year, say sources involved with the resolution process, Business Today reoprted. The Era Infra case was referred to NCLT in June 2017 with 11 other cases including the likes of Essar Steel, Bhushan Steel, Lanco Infratech and Jaypee Infra.

Eurozone industrial production rose less than economists had expected in June, raising questions about how soon the nascent recovery in the bloc’s pandemic-stricken economy will run out of steam, the Financial Times reported. The 9.1 per cent rise in eurozone factory output in June showed that the region’s manufacturers are bouncing back from the heavy blow of the coronavirus pandemic. But the rebound was less than the 10 per cent consensus forecasts of economists surveyed by Reuters.

South Africa’s Rand Merchant Bank, the investment banking arm of FirstRand Ltd., has been appointed as an adviser to help the government assess offers for stakes in its insolvent national airline, according to two people familiar with the situation, Bloomberg News reported. The state is looking to raise more than 10 billion rand ($575 million) that South African Airways administrators say is needed to revive its operations eight months after going into bankruptcy protection.

“Hard times are here” was how chancellor Rishi Sunak greeted this morning’s data showing the UK officially in its first recession — defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth — since the global financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. The 20.4 per cent fall in output — the biggest UK quarterly fall ever and the largest in any of the world’s major developed economies — led to calls from business groups for “bold action”, especially as government job support schemes begin to wind down.

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has set aside a plea challenging an NCLT order that rejected the petition to initiate insolvency proceedings against Tata Chemicals for claimed operational debt of Rs 68.44 crore, CNBC-TV18 reported. A three-member NCLAT bench upheld the order of the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that dismissed the plea of Allied Silica to initiate insolvency proceeding against the Tata group firm.

The High Court has appointed joint provisional liquidators to a Dublin city centre based nursing home, The Irish Times reported. The application was in relation to St Monica’s Nursing Home Ltd, which ran the elderly care facility at Belvedere Place, Dublin had catered for 46 residents, and had employed 65 full-time and part-time employees.

The High Court has expedited a trial at which it would be determined whether luxury car manufacturer McLaren Group could obtain the release of certain security for the benefit of its senior noteholders, failing which a financial restructuring which was contingent on that release could not be implemented…The court concluded that, absent determination of the proceedings within one month, McLaren Group would have no choice but to enter an insolvency process and that this justified expedition in this case, Lexology reported.