Headlines

With distressed debt investors and emerging markets funds suddenly faced with one of the sharpest asset price falls in a generation, Lebanon picked the wrong time to go bankrupt, Reuters reported. Funds are still circling as the clock ticks down on Lebanon’s first sovereign default, but some may not buy until after the government unveils plans to revamp the debt and reform its economy, and the dust settles on a global asset plunge.

King Felipe VI of Spain said on Sunday that he was renouncing his personal inheritance from his father, Juan Carlos, who has been implicated in a Swiss offshore account investigation, the International New York Times reported. King Felipe is also stripping his father of his stipend, in an apparent bid to sever any financial linkage between the Spanish royal household and the former monarch. The announcement came as King Felipe has himself risked getting entangled in the financial scandals centering on his father.

In an effort to conquer the virus, Italy’s government this week imposed drastic quarantine measures that have emptied the piazzas of cities that are cornerstones of European civilisation, the Financial Times reported. Like all museums, Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is closed. No one is throwing coins into Rome’s Trevi fountain. From inside the Vatican, Pope Francis live-streamed his regular Wednesday mass instead of greeting pilgrims on St Peter’s Square.

South Africa’s crowded corporate intensive-care ward has got a new patient. With the state airline bankrupt and the power monopoly burning through its latest bailout, Sasol Ltd., the fuel and chemicals company that’s South Africa’s biggest by revenue, has stumbled into its own debt crisis, Bloomberg News reported. The company was already struggling to keep up with repayments on 162 billion rand ($10 billion) in debt because of a botched U.S. chemical project, when it was blindsided last week a plunge in oil prices.

An investigation into Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd., initiated by its board after the death of founder V.G. Siddhartha, is likely to conclude that at least 20 billion rupees ($270 million) is missing from its accounts, according to people familiar with the matter. The months-long probe following the suicide of Siddhartha in July examined the financial transactions of India’s largest coffee chain and its dealings with dozens of private companies owned by the entrepreneur, Bloomberg News reported.

This week’s Budget offered help for Britain’s small and medium-sized enterprises — businesses with fewer than 250 employees — that could struggle as the coronavirus pandemic worsens, the Financial Times reported. Staff sickness is expected to rise just as customer numbers fall when those exposed to the virus follow the official advice and isolate themselves. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, focused on five measures to preserve cash and prevent insolvency among UK businesses.

Never in modern trading history have Canadian stocks fallen so much in a single day of trading as they did this week. Growing alarm over the coronavirus and plummeting oil prices have been catalysts for the slump, Bloomberg News reported. But one historian sees two underlying factors at play: a fractured geopolitical environment that has coincided with market volatility the world over, and Canada’s thin corporate base. While the S&P/TSX Composite Index clawed back some of its lost ground on Friday, it is still down 24% from its record high on Feb. 20.

The number of bankruptcies in Germany is set to rise this year for the first time since the financial crisis in 2009, the head of Germany’s insolvency administrators’ association said, warning that government aid could not protect all companies, Reuters reported. Europe’s largest economy is braced for a difficult period as the pandemic spreads around the world, severing supply chains and leading to collapsing demand for the exporting powerhouse’s goods. “There will be a rise in insolvencies for the first time since 2009, and it will be a clear increase,” Christoph Niering told Reuters.

With the Rajya Sabha giving its nod, Parliament today passed amendments to the insolvency law that will help ring-fence successful bidders of insolvent companies from risk of criminal proceedings for offences committed by previous promoters, The Tribune reported. The Rajya Sabha passed the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Bill, 2020, by a voice vote today, after it was approved by the Lok Sabha on March 6. The Bill will now replace an ordinance after it gets a presidential stamp.

A-ETPL, Associação - Port Work Company of Lisbon announced that it had been notified of the decision to declare its insolvency and the appointment of the insolvency administrator, The Portugal News reported. In a statement, A-ETPL states that the sentence handed down by the Lisbon Judicial Court of Justice Lisbon Commercial Court - Judge 7 set a deadline of 30 days for claiming credits.