Headlines

Deal talks and a rally in defensive sectors supported European shares on Monday as investors grappled with the potential impact of the coronavirus, while Irish stocks were hit by a strong showing for the left-wing Sinn Fein in a national election, Reuters reported. The pan-European STOXX 600 index ended 0.07% higher, having marked its best week in three months as part of a broader rebound from an earlier virus-driven sell-off.

Argentina’s top exporter of processed soy, Vicentin, has asked a judge to begin negotiations for debt restructuring, the company said on Monday, as the firm struggles to cope with a widening economic crisis in the South American nation, Reuters reported. The near 90-year-old firm, which defaulted on payments to suppliers late last year, was forced to sell part of its stake in a joint venture with Glencore in December, as its plans for expansion collided with Argentine financial woes.

Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena’s debt rating could be upgraded by Fitch if the lender manages to complete a planned sale of bad loans without eating into its capital base excessively, the ratings agency said on Monday, Reuters reported. Italy, which owns 68% of Monte dei Paschi after a 2017 bailout, has been in talks with EU competition authorities for months over a scheme to rid the bank of most its remaining impaired loans without subjecting it to heavy losses.

Europe needs clearer rules on how to deal with failing lenders to prevent the “perceived inequality” triggered by cases such as the €3.6bn rescue of Germany’s Nord LB, according to the head of the EU agency created to wind down banks, the Financial Times reported. The Single Resolution Board, headed by Elke König, was formed five years ago in the wake of the eurozone financial crisis to tackle a patchwork of national rules for bank bailouts and give investors more confidence.

Deutsche Bank AG and SSG Capital Management have made a joint bid for an Indian power producer’s debt of 60 billion rupees ($842 million), according to a person familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News reported. The consortium has submitted a binding bid of about 31 billion rupees for the delinquent debt of Chennai-based Coastal Energen Pvt., the person said, asking not to be named as the information isn’t public. The bid seeks a haircut of about 50% on the company’s debt, excluding outstanding accrued interest, the person said.

A proposal by South Africa’s biggest labor-union federation to rescue debt-stricken Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. with government workers’ pensions would amount to little more than a shifting of contingent liabilities, according to BNP Paribas South Africa, Bloomberg News reported. The Congress of South African Trade Unions’ proposal that state institutions including the Public Investment Corp.

Ghana plans to use as much as $1 billion of the Eurobonds it sold last week to help restructure the country’s obligations to independent power producers, said Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta. The West African country is in talks to re-negotiate supply deals with the power companies known as IPPs, Bloomberg News reported. The currently take-or-pay agreements mean the government is billed even for unused electricity. “We are going to put about $1 billion aside from the proceeds of the Eurobond to look at how we resolve those IPP issues,” Ofori-Atta said in a broadcast on Joy FM.

Canadian consumers filed the largest number of insolvencies in almost a decade at the end of last year, stoking concern about the impact of record indebtedness on households and the economy, Bloomberg News reported. Insolvencies totaled 35,155 in the final three months of 2019, the most in any one quarter since 2010, according to data released Monday by the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada. That’s up 10.2% compared with 31,900 in the same period a year earlier and is about 5,000 shy of the record 40,589 reached in the third quarter of 2009.

Noble Group, the commodity trader that almost blew up in an accounting and debt scandal before pushing through a dramatic financial restructuring, has hired a new finance chief, the Financial Times reported. The Hong Kong-based company said on Friday that it has recruited Jacques Enri, the former chief financial officer of Gunvor, one of the world’s leading energy traders. He replaces Paul Jackaman who left in July.

At the Whitchurch Care Home, emergency buzzers went unanswered, some medicines were not dispensed and many of its frail and elderly residents had not been given a bath, shower or a wash for a month, an official inspector’s report found, the Financial Times reported. A broken elevator meant residents on the second floor could not be taken to hospital appointments. The dismal conditions at the care home in Bristol, south-west England, found in January last year, were a sign of the financial pressures on its manager Four Seasons, Britain’s second-largest care home provider.