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Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA said its financial debt fell less than 0.1% in 2019 from the prior year to some $34.5 billion, though it remained in default on its bonds as sanctions freeze it out of the global banking system, Reuters reported. PDVSA, which is short for Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., has stopped paying interest on most its bonds, and together with Venezuela’s government has accumulated billions of dollars in late interest payments.
Lebanese lawmakers approved a 2020 budget plan with a crucial Eurobond payment weeks away, leaving it to the new government to decide on whether to pay creditors or save what’s left of the country’s reserves, Bloomberg News reported. The fiscal program passed on Monday by a vote of 49 to 13, with eight abstentions. The legislature approved the budget that envisages a 6% deficit, a far cry from a goal set by Lebanon’s former government to bring it close to zero. It includes no new taxes.
The Province of Buenos Aires improved the terms it’s offering bondholders if they agree to accept delayed payments, an about-face from the cash-strapped government after its first overture failed to attract sufficient support, Bloomberg News reported. In exchange for pushing back the deadline on a $250 million principal payment, investors would receive an extra $7.2 million in interest, according to the offer revealed Monday. Previously, officials were asking creditors to sign off on the three-month delay without any additional compensation.
Indonesian authorities are weighing the induction of a strategic investor into a unit of the nation’s oldest insurer that’s on the brink of collapse after alleged fund mismanagement left a $2 billion hole in its books, Bloomberg News reported. PT Asuransi Jiwasraya has submitted a restructuring proposal to the Financial Services Authority that includes the stake sale in unit PT Jiwasraya Putra and securing financial assistance from a planned holding company for state insurers, according to Riswinandi, commissioner for non-banking financial industry at the authority, known as OJK.
When John Zhao sealed the £900m takeover of the UK’s PizzaExpress in 2014 he burnished his reputation as a pioneer in China’s private equity industry, the Financial Times reported. Two years later Hony Capital, his buyout firm, ploughed money into WeWork as the New York shared-office provider set its sights on an aggressive expansion in China. Both deals shared a simple premise: take well-known western brands to China and they will flourish.
Two Indiabulls Group entities have moved the NCLT against IDBI Trusteeship Ltd. to recover dues against loans assigned to them by Dewan Housing Finance Ltd. DHFL, a non-banking finance company, had entered into an arrangement for assignment of loans with Indiabulls Commercial Credit Ltd. and Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd. for a consideration, BloombergQuint reported. As per the arrangement, the Indiabulls entities became assignee of the loans and DHFL ceased to hold any rights in such loans after the assignment.
The Republic of Congo’s public debt may exceed $12.5 billion, more than a third higher than previous International Monetary Fund estimates, corruption watchdog Global Witness said, Bloomberg News reported. The debt could further complicate Congo’s three-year, $449 million loan program it began with the IMF in July. The Washington-based lender has already postponed its first review of the program while Congo restructures external commercial debt, an IMF spokesman said by email Friday before it had seen the Global Witness report.
German business confidence unexpectedly dropped in January, cooling hopes that the downturn in the export-led manufacturing sector was on track to stabilise, the Financial Times reported. The Ifo Institute, a Munich-based think-tank, said its measure showing sentiment among the 9,000 German companies it surveys every month had declined to 95.9 in January, from 96.3 in December. That contrasts to economists’ expectations in a Reuters poll of a rise to 97.
Talks to salvage a tentative $1.7 billion debt restructuring between Congo Republic and energy traders Glencore and Trafigura are stuck, sources said, jeopardising an International Monetary Fund bailout for the debt-hobbled nation, Reuters reported. The IMF signed off in July on a $449 million, three-year lending programme to help the central African nation’s ailing economy - but only $45 million has been disbursed with other funds subject to semi-annual reviews.