Headlines

RTÉ has appointed the corporate finance arm of KPMG to review its strategic options for 2RN, its transmission network business, the Sunday Times reports. An outright sale of the business could raise up to €200 million for the cash-strapped national broadcaster, The Irish Times reported. The Central Bank of Ireland is at an advanced stage of an investigation into mortgage lenders who add legal fees to the bills of customers in arrears, driving them deeper into debt. Some banks stopped the practice after the regulator intervened.

The Reserve Bank of India would prefer a market-led resolution to the nation’s simmering shadow banking crisis, Governor Shaktikanta Das said, dashing hopes for bailouts in the struggling sector, Bloomberg News reported. “We are monitoring the top 50 non-bank finance companies, which account for 70%-75% of the sector loans outstanding,” Das said at the Bloomberg India Economic Forum in Mumbai late Thursday.

Companies in Europe are about to take a leaf out of the U.S. playbook on credit default swaps by making it harder for hedge funds to profit from a company’s collapse, Bloomberg News reported. Junk bonds financing the buyout of Merlin Entertainments Plc include terms in their documentation that prevent investors holding ‘net short positions’ with CDS contracts from voting on amendments, waivers or default notices. The provision follows similar efforts by high-yield borrowers in the U.S. sidelining speculators with an interest in seeing a company going bust.

Argentina’s government can’t resolve growing investor concern over the ability to repay its debt alone and will require consensus with the opposition to reach an orderly reprofiling of its obligations, Economy Minister Hernan Lacunza said, Bloomberg News reported. With just a month before general elections and the handover for the next administration slated for Dec.

The board of Brazilian phone carrier Oi, currently under bankruptcy protection, has named Rodrigo Abreu as its new Chief Operating Officer, the company said in a securities filing on Friday, Reuters reported. Abreu was previously a member of Oi’s board, where he headed a committee that was advising the company’s senior management on the recovery plan. Oi said that Abreu, as COO, will oversee key areas for the company such as engineering, systems and operational performance.

Reliance Capital Ltd.’s downgrade to default grade at Care Ratings Ltd. places the debt of embattled tycoon Anil Ambani’s conglomerate at risk, reigniting India’s credit scare, Bloomberg News reported. Mumbai-based Care cut Reliance Capital’s bonds by eight notches to D from BB, citing a delay in coupon payments on several of the lender’s non-convertible debentures, the rating company said in a Sept. 20 statement. Reliance Capital group’s debt stood at about $5 billion as of September, according to a company’s spokesman.

Thomas Cook has gone into administration after knife-edge talks over the weekend with lenders, shareholders and the UK government failed to piece together a rescue package for the 178-year-old travel company, the Financial Times reported. Following a drawn-out day of negotiations at Latham & Watkins, the law firm, on Sunday, Thomas Cook’s board said early on Monday morning that despite “considerable efforts” the failure of the talks meant “it had no choice but to take steps to enter into compulsory liquidation with immediate effect”.

French airline XL Airways has called on Air France to discuss a rescue deal to avert the collapse of the budget carrier that halted ticket sales and payments last week, Reuters reported. XL Airways, which has said it needs 35 million euros ($38.6 million) in fresh financing, requested in a statement on Sunday a meeting with Air France and the French authorities in the coming hours before a court is expected to put it into receivership on Monday.

Brazilian telecommunications firm Oi SA is in talks with Spain’s Telefonica SA and Italy’s Telecom Italia SpA to sell its mobile network to avoid insolvency, five people with knowledge of the matter said, Reuters reported. Oi has been struggling to turn around its business since filing for bankruptcy protection in June 2016 to restructure approximately 65 billion reais of debt.

The world’s leading economies need to ease trade tensions and act decisively to prevent a descent into a low-growth trap from which it would be difficult to escape, the OECD warned on Thursday, the Financial Times reported. Labelling the economic outlook as “increasingly fragile and uncertain”, the Paris-based international organisation forecast that Britain would fall into recession if it left the EU without a deal and eurozone growth would slow to close to zero.