Headlines

SoftBank has warned of a writedown of more than ¥1tn ($9.6bn) on investments held outside its huge Vision Fund, as the coronavirus crisis piles new pressure on founder Masayoshi Son’s bet on struggling WeWork, the Financial Times reported. The Japanese technology group’s widened loss forecast, announced on Thursday, came just two weeks after SoftBank flagged a ¥1.8tn blow to its $100bn, Saudi-backed technology fund, underscoring the depth of its exposure to the market turmoil sparked by the pandemic.

Rwanda’s central bank reduced its benchmark interest rate for the first time in about a year and lowered cash reserve requirements for banks to stimulate output amid the Covid-19 shock to the economy, Bloomberg News reported. The National Bank of Rwanda lowered the lending rate to 4.5% from 5%, according to an emailed statement. It was last cut in February 2019 by 50 basis points. Inflation could average 6% this year, slower than 8.2% in the second quarter, central bank Governor John Rwangombwa said in a phone interview after the rate decision.

Société Générale will revamp the trading arm of its investment bank for the second time in a year after suffering a devastating hit to its core equities business, chief executive Frédéric Oudéa told the Financial Times. The French bank fell to a shock loss of €326m in the first quarter after revenue in its equity trading unit — long hailed by executives as a key strength — collapsed almost 99 per cent to just €9m, the Financial Times reported.

Finablr Plc, the embattled owner of two foreign-exchange businesses, uncovered about $1 billion of debt hidden from its board that may have been used for purposes outside of the company, compounding a scandal that pushed its sister firm NMC Health Plc into administration, Bloomberg News reported. The London-listed company and its creditors found that Finablr Group’s overall debt was about $1.3 billion, excluding the debt of its Travelex Holdings Ltd. unit and “materially above” its last reported figure, according to a statement.

Before the coronavirus, investors hungry for returns piled into risky corporate loans and bonds with precious little protection for creditors, Reuters reported. Now they’re frantically scouring the terms to see just what firms can get away with to survive the fallout. At the same time, firms starved of cash and funds thinking about lending to them are also poring over the fine print to see what room they have to shift assets away from other creditors, pay dividends or borrow more while staving off default.

Hontop Energy (Singapore) Pte Ltd, the trading arm of a Shandong-based refiner, is negotiating directly with banks on managing its debts after it withdrew its application for a debt moratorium, two sources with knowledge of the matter said, Reuters reported. Hontop submitted last month a request to the Singapore High Court to apply for a debt moratorium but the company subsequently withdrew it, they said. The company went into receivership in February after Singapore bank DBS, one of Hontop’s creditors, appointed accounting firm KPMG as the receiver.

Finland’s Stockmann suffered a 49.1% fall in March sales hurt by the impact of the coronavirus, said the department store operator, which has filed for corporate restructuring, Reuters reported. Its adjusted operating loss widened to 30.5 million euros from 21.4 million a year earlier, it said. Shares in the company were down 4.2% by 0900 GMT. Known for its upmarket department stores, Stockmann has struggled for years in the face of a consumer shift to online shopping, prompting cost cuts and divestments. On April 6, Stockmann announced it would file for corporate restructuring.

Lebanon’s government will seek a loan from the International Monetary Fund after signing off on a rescue plan to begin overhauling an economy facing its worst financial crisis in decades, Bloomberg News reported. “We will ask for a loan program from the International Monetary Fund and formalize our negotiations with Eurobond holders and move forward with that,” Prime Minister Hassan Diab said in a televised speech Thursday after his cabinet approved the plan.

European business and consumer confidence plummeted at a record rate in April due to the coronavirus crisis, according to the EU’s main economic sentiment indicator which has fallen close to the all-time lows of the financial crash a decade ago, the Financial Times reported.

Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd’s administrators have halted payments to bondholders and appointed Morgan Stanley to help sell the airline within four months, said a participant in a meeting of creditors owed nearly A$7 billion ($4.58 billion), Reuters reported. Administrators from Deloitte Australia were appointed this month to restructure and sell Virgin, making it the Asia-Pacific airline industry’s biggest victim of the coronavirus crisis.