Headlines

The beleaguered HNA Group Co. has pulled off an escape from a domestic bond default after a hastily arranged creditor meeting that caused a stir in China’s investment community, Bloomberg News reported. The heavily indebted Chinese conglomerate said Wednesday it has garnered enough support from bondholders for a proposal to extend by one year the maturity of a 390 million yuan ($55 million) 7.1% note that originally comes due Wednesday, according to a company filing.

Canadian companies are chopping costs, suspending dividends, and cutting CEO salaries to stave off loan defaults amid the coronavirus, Bloomberg News reported. But there hasn’t yet been a jump in formal bankruptcy filings, according to one of the country’s top restructuring lawyers. Instead, the emerging pain for big and small companies is spelling booming business for out-of-court proceedings, said Luc Morin, a Montreal-based insolvency and corporate restructuring partner at Norton Rose Fulbright.

France expects Group of 20 nations will agree to a debt moratorium for African nations in a conference call later Wednesday, an official at the Elysee Palace said. President Emmanuel Macron has been pushing for debt relief to support African nations caught up in the Covid-19 pandemic and on Monday called for a massive cancellation of the continent’s sovereign debt, Bloomberg News reported. A moratorium would allow African countries “to take a breath and not pay interest,” Macron told Radio France Internationale in an interview released Wednesday.

The finance chief of Grupo Aeromexico SAB, Mexico’s largest airline by market value, says the company will weather a pandemic that dried up passenger demand and drove the firm’s bonds to distressed levels, even without the safety net of a potential government aid package, Bloomberg News reported. Aeromexico bonds due in 2025 now fetch just 31 cents on the dollar after the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent travel restrictions all but erased global demand for passenger flights.

Argentina registered to issue more than $50 billion in new debt as it prepares to make a painful restructuring offer to holders of its sovereign bonds, Bloomberg News reported. The filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission gives an inkling of how much in new securities the country anticipates issuing in the restructuring. President Alberto Fernandez will meet provincial governors at 4pm Thursday at the presidential residence to discuss details of the debt plan, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Zambia’s only option is to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund as years of excessive borrowing coupled with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic have left it struggling to pay its debts, the main opposition leader said, Bloomberg News reported. The southern African nation’s Eurobonds have been among the world’s worst performing this year and its currency has depreciated by 23% against the dollar as the global outbreak of the virus halts supply chains, forcing down the price of copper that accounts for most of Zambia’s exports.

Via Varejo SA, one of Brazil’s largest appliance retailers, is seeking to suspend rent payments for over 1,020 stores to help offset a 50% revenue drop, two people with knowledge of the matter said, Reuters reported. One of the people said the company has already reached an agreement with some landlords and expects to get group agreements with other retailers that would exempt it from paying rent on its stores located in malls for as long as they are shut by the coronavirus lockdowns.

British fashion brands Oasis and Warehouse have fallen into administration, threatening over 2,000 jobs and joining a growing list of store groups pushed over the edge by the coronavirus crisis, Reuters reported. Deloitte, appointed as administrator to the Oasis Warehouse group owned by Icelandic bank Kaupthing on Wednesday, said that 202 of the retailers’ employees would be made redundant, 1,801 furloughed and 41 head office staff retained. The brands trade from 92 branches across the Oasis Warehouse group’s leasehold stores, with 437 concessions located in third party retailers.

Ukraine’s largest private power producer, DTEK, which recently suspended its debt payments, is ready to submit proposals on debt restructuring to creditors, the company’s CEO said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. DTEK, owned by the country’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, missed payments of coupons on Eurobonds and interest on bank debt as it struggled to minimize effects of the economic crisis.

Swiss-based sporting goods group Intersport’s main franchisee in Sweden has filed for a court-led restructuring as it seeks to avert bankruptcy in the face of falling sales because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. Intersport AB, which employs about 2,000 people, said in a statement on Tuesday that it needs temporary relief from creditors to weather the downturn after a sharp decline in sales left it without adequate cash to pay all of its bills. “This is an extraordinary measure ...