Headlines

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said on Tuesday its central board had decided to create a separate supervisory and regulatory cadre within the bank after reviewing the current supervisory structure, Reuters reported. The board also reviewed the current economic situation, global and domestic challenges and various areas of operations of the central bank, along with the medium-term strategy document covering the RBI’s Mission Statement and the Vision Statement.

A spate of farmer defaults in Brazil’s top grain-producing state is creating headaches for global traders who are among their main creditors and posing challenges to the widespread use of barter in the world’s largest soybean exporter, Reuters reported. The battles in Mato Grosso bankruptcy courts pit farmers against international trading houses, such as France’s Louis Dreyfus Corp (LDC) and U.S.-based Bunge Ltd, which have been lending aggressively to producers through Brazil’s unique barter system to protect profit margins from newer traders in China.

Egypt’s government debt surged to around $339 billion in the year to end-December, the central bank said on Tuesday, but economists say the borrowing remains within relatively safe limits, Reuters reported. The government’s foreign debt rose by 16.6 percent to $96.61 billion while domestic debt increased by 20.25 percent to 4.108 trillion Egyptian pounds ($242 billion). Economists say much of the foreign debt is relatively easy to roll over because it is owed to friendly lenders such as Gulf governments or the African Development Bank and the World Bank.

Thomas Cook intends to push ahead with expansion plans despite growing doubt over the 178-year old UK travel group’s ability to continue trading, the Financial Times reported. The company said it would open its 13th hotel of the summer season this weekend as it sought to play down fears over its future days after it stock plummeted as an investment bank branded its equity potentially worthless. The new hotel, based in Chania, Crete, will open on Saturday and be Thomas Cook’s first family-focused own-brand property.

Jamie Oliver’s U.K. restaurant business collapsed into insolvency, leaving more than 1,000 jobs at risk after the celebrity chef failed to turn around the performance of his eateries, Bloomberg News reported. Accounting firm KPMG has been appointed to oversee the immediate closure of 22 of the “Naked Chef” star’s Jamie’s Italian, Fifteen London and Barbecoa restaurants in the U.K. The procedures do not affect Jamie Oliver’s international business. The group operates 25 U.K. restaurants and all but three have immediately closed, resulting in 1,000 lost jobs.

Dollar loans to Chinese borrowers have cratered this year, thanks to both a decline in demand and increased wariness among lenders amid escalating U.S.-China tensions, Bloomberg News reported. Syndicated dollar loan issuance to Chinese borrowers has tumbled 62% from the start of the year through May 17, to $7.3 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the lowest level since 2012. “Volume is unlikely to rebound anytime soon,” said Fang Lei, a Hong Kong-based managing director of Asia Pacific debt origination and advisory at Credit Agricole SA.

Signs of a turnaround at its marquee Jaguar Land Rover unit may not be enough to ease the challenges facing India’s oldest and most-storied business empire, Bloomberg News reported. The Tata Group bought the British luxury carmaker in 2008 for $2.3 billion, and it’s lately become a drag on the salt-to-software conglomerate, racking up losses in three quarters through December. Although Jaguar posted a net income of 119 million pounds ($151 million) this week, debt at owner Tata Motors Ltd.

The assets of Kenya’s ARM Cement have been sold to the National Cement Company for $50 million, its administrator said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. ARM Cement was put under administration last August by some of its creditors over a $190 million debt and its shares were suspended from the Nairobi bourse. It has debts with a range of creditors, including local commercial banks. The transaction, which applies to ARM Cement’s Kenyan assets only, is subject to regulatory approvals, the statement from the administrator said.

Mining company Vedanta and its Zambian unit Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) said they were seeking urgent talks with the Zambian president following a high court order on Tuesday to appoint a provisional liquidator, Reuters reported. The news has rattled foreign investors already nervous governments in central African countries are seeking a much bigger share of resource revenues, which they say will discourage investment the region desperately needs.

Congo Republic’s senate on Monday voted to restructure some of its debt with China, a move that the International Monetary Fund has said was necessary to unlock financial support, the finance ministry said. Negotiations over a bailout for the oil-dependant economy have dragged on since 2017, as Congolese authorities failed to convince the IMF they were doing enough to control the national debt or tackle corruption, Reuters reported.