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Kenya’s biggest bank by assets, KCB Group, has restructured more than 110 billion shillings ($1 billion) of its loans to customers and up to a quarter of its book could be affected by mid-June, its chief executive told Reuters, Reuters reported. The central bank allowed lenders in the East African nation to offer relief to distressed customers in mid-March after the first COVID-19 case was reported. Total restructured loans for the industry stood at 273 billion shillings, 9.6% of the total, at the end of April, the central bank said in a presentation sent to the media on Thursday.
UK banks have hit out at the prospect of negative interest rates, saying the policy would slash their earnings and limit their ability to absorb an expected torrent of coronavirus-related loan losses, the Financial Times reported. With big British lenders on track to boost reserves to £18.5bn for bad debts in 2020, the Bank of England’s admission this week that it was eyeing negative rates for the first time in its 324-year history has caused deep concern in the sector.
This week as small businesses across Italy reopened after nearly two months of lockdown, Franco Magliocchetti, a 32-year-old restaurateur in Rome, spent most of his day sat glancing at rows of empty tables. Mr Magliocchetti and his business partner, Fabio Trovato, are crossing their fingers that the lifting of restrictions will see the country bounce back from what is forecast to be the sharpest recession in its modern history.
Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab blamed “criminal” currency manipulation for the unraveling of the country’s decades-old peg as he touted his cabinet’s achievements despite an unprecedented financial crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Flanked by his entire cabinet during a televised speech on Thursday, Diab criticized what he said were years of neglect and mismanagement on the part of the state, saying his own government -- in place since January -- was on the path to restoring confidence in Lebanon.
South Africa’s third-biggest telecom operator, Cell C, plans to hive off assets into a new special purpose vehicle (SPV), the country’s competition watchdog said on Thursday, as part of a plan to restructure the company’s debt, Reuters reported. Gatsby SPV has been set up for the purpose of the proposed transaction, the Competition Commission said in a statement. It did not give details about the deal or indicate which assets of Cell C may be sold to Gatsby. The Commission said Gatsby SPV will be controlled by a trust that is yet to be formed.
Some of the world’s poorest oil-producing countries are slipping behind on payments for billions of dollars in oil-for-cash loans from commodity trading houses, putting them at risk of default, Bloomberg News reported. The so-called prepayment deals, in which a trading house advances a nation money to be repaid with future oil shipments, have been popular among some African and Middle East oil nations as the only way to raise funds. But they have also proved controversial: in some cases they create an opaque source of debt that governments find hard to pay back when oil prices plunge.
Even if Argentina defaults for the ninth time in its history, creditors say the issue could be cured quickly as the two sides work to restructure $65 billion in overseas bonds, Bloomberg News reported. Although an event of default will be hard to avoid for Argentina, there is willingness to resolve the negotiations, said Greylock Capital Management LLC’s Chief Executive Officer Hans Humes at an online event.
The Bank of Thailand cut its benchmark interest rate to a fresh record low and said it was ready to use additional policy tools if needed with the economy expected to shrink further. By a 4-3 vote, the central bank lowered the policy rate Wednesday by 25 basis points to 0.5%, its third cut this year, Bloomberg News reported. All but three of 24 economists in a Bloomberg survey correctly predicted the decision, with the others expecting no change.
On the night of May 12, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi set the nation of 1.3 billion people abuzz with promises of unleashing a massive stimulus to shore up an economy facing its deepest recession in decades, Bloomberg News reported. A week later and after five drawn-out press conferences by his Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the entire package of about 21 trillion rupees ($277 billion), or 10% of India gross domestic product, underwhelmed economists and investors alike.