Headlines

Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said he had a “positive” feeling over a sovereign credit rating report expected later this week, although he had no information about it, Lebanese newspaper al-Joumhouria reported on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Lebanon, saddled with one of the world’s heaviest public debt burdens and blighted by years of low economic growth, is seeking to put its public finances on a sustainable path by implementing long-delayed economic reforms. However, markets have been pricing in the risk of a sovereign credit rating downgrade in recent days.

Germany has sold 30-year debt at a negative yield for the first time, although demand at Wednesday’s auction was weak as some investors balked at the prospect of paying to tie up their cash for three decades, the Financial Times reported. The sale of a new bond maturing in 2050 priced with a yield of minus 0.11 per cent, roughly in line with yields in the secondary market. German 30-year bonds have sunk into negative territory in recent weeks as investors pile into safe assets in anticipation of a revival of the European Central Bank’s bond-buying quantitative easing programme.

Housing Development & Infrastructure Ltd. fell to a record and Oberoi Realty Ltd. dropped as authorities intensify their clean up of India’s struggling property sector, Bloomberg News reported. Bankruptcy proceedings will begin against HDIL after creditor Bank of India filed an application, the developer said in a filing Tuesday, adding that it will appeal the decision.

Zambia’s central bank kept its key interest rate unchanged to boost economic growth, while warning that it could tighten policy if inflation doesn’t return to target, Bloomberg News reported. The Bank of Zambia held the rate at 10.25%, Governor Denny Kalyalya told reporters Wednesday in the capital, Lusaka. That’s after the Monetary Policy Committee bucked the global trend in May by tightening by 50 basis points as inflation was accelerating.

Gold miner Avocet Mining Plc on Wednesday appointed Paul Williams and Geoffrey Bouchier from Duff & Phelps Ltd as joint administrators, as it started its insolvency process, Reuters reported. The appointments, effective Aug. 21, come a few months after the struggling gold miner said its board proposed voluntary liquidation of the company as it faced mounting debt. Last week, the West Africa-focussed miner said it would pursue a formal insolvency process by appointing administrators to the company, but also remained open to exploring “viable funded investment opportunities”.

Indian tycoons including Ajay Piramal and Pallonji Mistry are grappling with a prolonged realty slump that’s adding to the shadow banking crisis, showing that even the nation’s richest can’t escape widening cracks in the debt market, Bloomberg News reported. Ratings of some companies in the conglomerates run by billionaires Piramal and Mistry have been cut as the business environment worsened and funding costs rose.

An acceleration in economic growth in South Africa could trigger power cuts, with state utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.’s fragile generation system unable to respond to increased demand for electricity, Bloomberg News reported. The energy availability of Eskom’s generation fleet is supposed to be as high as 80%, but is currently as low as 69%, and even a 0.1% rise in gross domestic product could result in outages, Nelisiwe Magubane, an Eskom board member, said at an event organized by research company Afriforesight in Johannesburg on Wednesday.

Less than two years after Argentina made a splash in markets by selling a $2.75 billion, 100-year bond, another debt restructuring is a real possibility after President Mauricio Macri was routed in a primary election, Bloomberg News reported. Money managers and analysts from firms including Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. say investors are likely to recoup less than 40 cents on the dollar on its notes if Argentina reneges on its debt for the third time in two decades.

A High Court judge has said he would approve a debt write-off of about €3 million for musical director Frank McNamara and his wife Theresa Lowe, the former RTÉ presenter, The Irish Times reported. However Mr Justice Denis McDonald has sought further clarification first around the true value of Mr McNamara’s inheritance of his parents’ home and rental income on the property, which will go towards repaying some of the couple’s debts, before he signs off on their proposed personal insolvency arrangements.

Dollar-denominated bonds issued by Lebanon’s government dropped to new lows on Tuesday on worries about the risk of a sovereign credit rating downgrade by S&P Global, Reuters reported. The 2027 issue slumped by 2 cents in the dollar to trade at its lowest level, while the 2026 issue shed 2.4 cents to also reach a new low, according to Tradeweb data. “There’s an upcoming rating review by S&P and people are focusing on the possibility of a downgrade,” said Giyas Gokkent, of JPMorgan Securities.