Headlines

Creditors of the biggest lender to South African farmers picked Rand Merchant Bank as financial adviser after it missed a loan repayment that triggered a cross-default in notes issued under a 50 billion-rand ($2.7-billion) bond program, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News reported. The Johannesburg-based investment bank has been entrusted with the task of drawing up cash-flow projections for the Land and Agricultural Development Bank, the people said, asking not to be identified as an announcement hasn’t been made.

Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd.’s ability to avoid collapse could come down to about a dozen potential investors who tuned into a video presentation on the airline’s coronavirus survival plan this week, Bloomberg News reported. Chief Executive Officer Shai Weiss pitched the firms in a simultaneous online link-up, according to a person familiar with the matter.

India’s shadow lenders are facing fresh turmoil after asset manager Franklin Templeton shut funds late last month, prompting other large investors to dump the financiers’ debt, Bloomberg News reported. Mutual funds are big buyers of non-bank financial firms’ bonds and some are struggling to meet redemptions after the biggest-ever forced closure of funds in the country. Spreads on AAA rated five-year bonds of shadow lenders have soared to an eight-year high.

Uganda would prefer debt cancellation to help rebuild its economy after the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, rather than rescheduling of payments, Bloomberg News reported. The government of Africa’s second-biggest coffee grower is considering offers from various creditors, Finance Minister Matia Kasaija said by phone Thursday and declined to identify the lenders. “There is an argument with creditors,” Kasaija said, without elaborating. “Most of those who have written” to the ministry suggest the nation reschedule payments, he said from the capital, Kampala.

Administrators at state-owned South African Airways (SAA) will not sell assets for an interim period without involving the government, a memorandum signed by one of the administrators and the public enterprises ministry showed, Reuters reported. The memorandum, which was seen by Reuters, also said the administrators and the ministry had agreed that the objective of SAA’s bankruptcy protection process was to have a restructured SAA or a new company with no reliance on public finances. A public enterprises ministry spokesman confirmed the memorandum was an authentic document.

Satellite operator Intelsat SA said late on Wednesday that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, making it the latest casualty of severe business disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. The company listed assets and liabilities in the range of $10 billion to $50 billion, according to a filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Intelsat also said it had received $1 billion in debtor-in-possession financing.

India’s battle-scarred bankers are hoarding cash and reluctant to lend to smaller firms, forcing the government to ride to the rescue of millions of companies struggling for survival during the nationwide lockdown, Bloomberg News reported. The lenders are accepting penalty rates to keep a record $92 billion a day with the Reserve Bank of India and have shunned a central bank program aimed at credit-starved corporates, choosing safety as the pandemic cripples economic activity. The government responded on Wednesday by offering $62 billion in credit lines and cash injections to the

Kenyan banks are expected to hoard cash as they report a jump in first-quarter loan-loss provisions to cope with the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. Kenyan institutions got a cash boost when the central bank lowered reserve requirements to free up funds for lending, while interest rates have been cut to a nine-year low. Banks have now started restructuring debt for customers hard hit by a drop in business activity because of lockdown-measures aimed at slowing the spread of Covid-19.

Europe’s biggest banks expressed different views of how the economy will fare in the fallout from the coronavirus, making for widely varying expectations of how much of their loan books will go bad, Bloomberg News reported. Deutsche Bank AG and France’s Societe Generale SA gave the rosiest estimates of the eurozone economy among the continent’s biggest banks, while Italy’s UniCredit SpA was the most pessimistic.

While most of the world contemplates with dread the economic destruction wreaked by the coronavirus, for many Argentine entrepreneurs it is just one more challenge to overcome, the Financial Times reported. Accustomed to dealing with crises on an all-too-regular basis, many start-ups have succeeded in turning misfortune to their advantage. Argentina’s last major economic collapse in 2001-02 served as a catalyst for the rise of some of its most successful companies.