Headlines

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Nicolas Maduro briefly discussed Caracas’ debt obligations to Russia last week during a visit to Moscow by the Venezuelan leader, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, without providing details, Reuters reported. Close ally Moscow has acted as a lender of last resort for Caracas, with the Russian government and oil giant Rosneft (ROSN.MM) providing at least $17 billion in loans and credit lines since 2006. In November 2017, Russia agreed to restructure Venezuela’s sovereign debt of $3.15 billion, with repayments over 10 years.

An Indian bank was able to dupe regulators about its growing exposure to a single property developer for at least a decade before the firm filed for insolvency, according to a letter written by the lender’s managing director, who has since been removed, Bloomberg News reported. Punjab & Maharashtra Co-operative Bank Ltd. used “dummy accounts” and other methods to hide its oversized loans to Housing Development & Infrastructure Ltd. from the Reserve Bank of India, Joy Thomas wrote in the letter, a copy of which was seen by Bloomberg News.

The UK government has revealed that its tax authority has reported itself to the police watchdog four times over the suicides of individuals facing the loan charge — the contentious policy which has left many people facing crippling tax bills, the Financial Times reported. The loan charge, which was introduced by HM Revenue & Customs in April, requires people who used loan-based avoidance schemes to pay tax on up to 20 years of income in a single financial year.

Argentina’s creditors holding out hope that they can avoid losses on the country’s bonds are “living in fantasy land”, one big investor said, reflecting tensions over the government’s reorganisation of its massive debt pile, the Financial Times reported. Alberto Fernández, who is expected to win presidential elections later this month, has assured markets that losses on bonds would not be necessary as part of the debt’s “voluntary reprofiling”, as long as creditors give Argentina’s economy time to start growing again.

Harland and Wolff, the Belfast shipyard that built the Titanic, has been sold by owner Dolphin Drilling to infrastructure specialists InfraStrata for 6 million pounds ($7.4 million), saving the facility from closure, Reuters reported. InfraStrata said Harland and Wolff’s multi-purpose fabrication facility, quaysides and docking facilities were ideally suited for the energy infrastructure industry and the company’s projects. All 79 workers who did not opt for voluntary redundancy earlier in the year will be retained, the company said.

Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.’s stand-alone credit profile was downgraded one notch at Fitch Ratings, signaling the South African power utility’s deteriorating ability to repay debt without additional government support, Bloomberg News reported. Weakening revenue growth, profit-margin compression because of lower tariff increases, and higher primary energy costs were cited by Fitch as among the reasons for the reduction. Eskom’s poor liquidity and high debt levels are the worst among its peers, which includes Namibia Power Corp., Fitch said in a statement on Monday.

Ljubljana airport should be able to replace most flights lost in the collapse of Slovenia’s Adria Airways within a year and a half, its manager and owner Fraport said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Fraport is in talks with airlines to replace Adria flights, which accounted for 11 of 29 regular routes serving Ljubljana, Zmago Skobir, business director of Fraport Slovenia, told a news conference. “There is demand for these destinations and we have received the first signals that they will be replaced,” Skobir said.

India’s Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) said on Tuesday it aims to resolve 50% of its debt by March 2020 and had identified resolution plans for all of its 302 entities, Reuters reported. The indebted conglomerate’s non-executive chairman Uday Kotak made the comment a year after the government replaced IL&FS management with a team he leads, following a series of defaults that triggered concerns of a bad debt crisis in India’s shadow banking sector.

Turkey’s finance minister said on Monday that steps taken by the government would give banks a “clean slate” to begin lending again, but bankers and analysts said Ankara needed to do more to understand the extent of the mess and to finally clear it up, Reuters reported. Two senior bankers said that big lenders may not completely abide Ankara’s most aggressive move so far: a directive two weeks ago for banks to reclassify as non-performing loans (NPLs) some 46 billion lira ($8.2 billion) in debt.

Fitch Ratings has downgraded Saudi Arabia, citing vulnerabilities in the kingdom’s economic infrastructure after attacks on oil facilities this month knocked out half of its crude production, the Financial Times reported. The New York-based rating agency on Monday dropped Saudi Arabia’s long-term foreign currency issuer default rating to A from A+, with a stable outlook. Fitch said the downgrade followed the escalation in geopolitical and military tension in the Gulf as well as deteriorating fiscal and external balance sheets.