Headlines

Hyperinflation has blighted Zimbabwe, Venezuela and the former Yugoslavia among others over the years, Reuters reported. Now, Lebanon has been gripped by the phenomenon, becoming the first country in the Middle East and North Africa to suffer from rapid, runaway price rises for goods and services. It joins Venezuela, which has been locked in hyperinflation since April, its second bout in recent years, according to Steve H. Hanke, Professor of Applied Economics at the Johns Hopkins University and an expert on the topic.

Ardagh Group, the glass and metal containers group led by Dublin financier Paul Coulson, swung into a loss in the three months to the end of June as its sales fell amid the Covid-19 pandemic and it booked one-off expenses relating to a refinancing of some of it debt, The Irish Times reported. The New York-listed company reported a net loss of $64 million (€55.3m ) for the period, compared to a $69 million profit for the same three months last year. Sales dipped by 6 per cent during the second quarter to $1.61 million.

UniCredit has sold non-performing loans worth €1.54bn in an effort to reduce its exposure to bad debt, as banks come under pressure to clean up their balance sheets in anticipation of a wave of defaults related to Covid-19, the Financial Times reported. Italy’s largest lender by assets said that the two portfolios of non-performing unsecured loans — made to small and medium-sized enterprises and worth €702m and €840m — had been bought by digital bank illimity, Banca Ifis and a securitisation vehicle managed by digital bank Guber Banca and Barclays.

Hospital operator NMC Health is looking to raise up to $250 million in debt while it prepares for insolvency proceedings in the United Arab Emirates and has picked Perella Weinberg Partners to advise it on the process, sources said, Reuters reported. The company, run by administrators Alvarez & Marsal, has also tasked Perella to advise it on the sale of UK-based Aspen Healthcare, a company it acquired in 2018, the two sources familiar with the matter said.

British Steel’s Chinese owner has had its bid to acquire a factory in France rejected by a court as concerns grow in some European capitals about companies from the Asian superpower snapping up assets, the Financial Times reported. Jingye Group, which saved the UK’s second-largest steelmaker from bankruptcy earlier this year, was attempting to wrest control of a small mill in north-east France that belonged to British Steel.

All conditions for a rescue plan for South African Airways (SAA) have been met, apart from a guarantee letter lenders need from the government, the state-owned airline’s administrators said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The administrators will ask creditors at a meeting on Friday for the letter, stating that state guarantees will remain in force until the lenders’ claims are paid out in full, to be agreed by July 27, later than a previous deadline.

Eurozone consumer sentiment has ebbed slightly after a brief recovery from the sharp economic downturn caused by the pandemic, fuelling economists’ fears that the pace of the rebound has begun to slow, the Financial Times reported. The European Commission’s headline consumer sentiment indicator fell to minus 15 in July, below its minus 14.7 reading in June and well below the consensus expectation of minus 12 among economists polled by Reuters.

The Pacific island nation of Tonga has asked Beijing to restructure its large bilateral debt load, the government said on Thursday, as the pandemic upends the region’s tourism revenues and an onerous Chinese loan repayment schedule looms, Reuters reported. Tonga is one of the biggest Chinese debtors in the South Pacific, with its financial reliance dating back to loans taken more than a decade ago to rebuild its capital, Nuku’alofa, after riots. The small economy, largely dependent on external aid and remittances from Tongans living abroad, has since taken out additional loans.

Australia’s government is being sued for not adequately disclosing the impact of climate change on its sovereign debt, Bloomberg Green reported. The class action filed in the Federal Court in Melbourne on Wednesday alleges the Australian Office of Financial Management and the Treasury have misled or deceived investors by failing to disclose climate change alongside other financial risks in its exchange-traded bonds, according to court documents. The lawsuit seeks promotion of the debt to be halted until the disclosures are made.

The number of people going financially insolvent is poised to spike in the run-up to Christmas as businesses fail and unpaid debts mount up, a survey of experts suggests, the Evening Express reported. The majority of personal insolvency experts who think there will be an increase in cases in the coming year think the spike will happen towards the end of 2020, although a significant proportion predict it will be in early 2021, according to the findings from insolvency and restructuring trade body R3.