Headlines

An investment company backed by billionaire banker Joseph Safra is considering a takeover bid for airport foreign exchange provider Travelex Holdings Ltd, the Mail on Sunday reported, citing financial industry sources, Bloomberg News reported. The Safra bid comes after Finablr-owned Travelex appointed PWC to find a buyer for the unit. On April 30, Finablr disclosed that its debt burden stood at around $1.3 billion, “materially above” the levels of indebtedness previously given to the board.

Argentina’s Mendoza province, famed for its bodegas and Malbec grapes grown in the shadows of the Andes, has formally launched a debt restructuring process after missing an initial payment deadline on a 2024 bond, Reuters reported. The regional government said in a statement on Friday that it had opened an invitation to holders of around $590 million of the 2024 notes, which could see new debt instruments issued. The missed payment is still within a grace period.

China is considering using about 200 billion yuan ($28 billion) in proceeds from government bond sales to help address risks in the banking sector, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News reported. The debt will be part of the total issuance planned by the central government in 2020, and it’ll be used for measures including re-capitalization for medium- and small-sized lenders, the people said, asking not to be named as they’re not authorized to speak publicly.

Housebuilders in the UK are collapsing at an accelerating rate, threatening the much-needed supply of new homes, the Financial Times reported. Last year 368 companies in the sector filed for insolvency, according to data obtained from The Insolvency Service under the Freedom of Information Act. That compares with 207 in 2016, with the number rising each year since. The builders filing for insolvency were overwhelmingly small and medium sized enterprises, according to accountants Price Bailey, which obtained the data.

India should prepare to inject capital into state banks and private-sector lenders need to strengthen their balance sheets, to help bolster the economy against the coronavirus pandemic, according to a senior banker, Bloomberg News reported. “I do believe the government will have to be ready to support public sector banks with capital,” said Uday Kotak, the billionaire founder of Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.

Switzerland has opened a probe related to $2 billion of loans to Mozambique that were organized by banks including Credit Suisse Group AG and VTB Bank PJSC, in a scandal that has already attracted the attention of prosecutors in the U.S, Bloomberg News reported. The criminal probe started in February against “persons unknown” on suspicion of money laundering in connection with the credit, the Office of the Attorney General said on Friday. The target of the proceedings is not any specific person or entity, the office said.

South Africa’s Comair , which is under bankruptcy protection, intends to halve its fleet of aircraft as part of efforts to rescue the company, its administrators said on Friday, Reuters reported. Comair, which operates the local British Airways franchise and budget airline kulula.com, filed for business rescue, a South African form of bankruptcy protection, last month after restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus forced airlines to stop flying.

With an external debt burden approaching $50 billion, a plea from Angola to reschedule its repayments is a stark reminder that some African economies were in deep trouble even before the coronavirus outbreak, Bloomberg News reported. Details are sparse. President Joao Lourenco said on May 30 sub-Saharan Africa’s fourth-biggest economy had started talks to renegotiate its debt, without specifying which loans or Eurobonds are affected. The finance ministry has since announced plans to “re-profile” borrowings from nations that buy its oil.

Investors holding several of Ecuador's sovereign bonds said Thursday that they had formed a committee to conduct talks with the government over a debt restructuring plan as the nation grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, LatinFinance reported. "The committee is representative of Ecuador's bondholder base and includes holdings across each series of the bonds," the institutional bondholders said in a statement. The committee added that it has hired BroadSpan Capital and UBS as financial advisers in the negotiations.

Businesses centring on travel and hospitality have endured a nightmare start to 2020. With the global outbreak of coronavirus, and the international lock-down ushered in to slow its spread, every aspect of the leisure sector has been battered by Covid-19-related headwinds, Consultancy.uk reported. In the airline segment for example, 700 of Lufthansa’s fleet of 760 planes have been grounded amid the coronavirus lock-down, with the number of passengers falling by 99%.