Headlines

Germany has sold 10-year debt with a negative yield for the first time since the autumn of 2016, amid fears of a worsening global economic outlook, the Financial Times reported. Investors have moved into haven assets in recent weeks on rising concerns about slowdowns in major economies, such as Germany and the US. The move intensified after the US Federal Reserve last week ditched plans for raising interest rates this year.

Settlement talks are under way in the marathon case by Sean Quinn’s five adult children denying liability for some €410 million under guarantees of loans advanced by Anglo Irish Bank to Quinn companies, The Irish Times reported. Mr Justice Garrett Simons was told of the development at the High Court on Wednesday, just after he ruled the children cannot pursue claims that their father unduly influenced them to sign the securities and “effectively dictated” to them about the lending.

The latest ructions in Turkish money markets are prompting fears that the country could be heading for another serious bout of currency weakness, echoing last summer’s lira crisis that has left deep scars on the economy, the Financial Times reported. Foreign investors were effectively frozen out of selling the lira on Wednesday after the overnight offshore swap rate more than tripled to 1,200 per cent, with analysts saying banks had been ordered not to lend to foreign counterparties — a claim that the Turkish Banking Association has denied.

Brazilian energy firm Eneva SA announced a secondary offering of 49.97 million shares in a securities filing on Wednesday, confirming an earlier Reuters report. The firm, which owns gas-fired power plants and natural gas exploration and production assets in northeastern Brazil, said shareholders Itau Unibanco Holding SA, Uniper Holding GmbH, Banco BTG Pactual SA, Banco Pine SA , and Dommo Austria GmbH, a unit of Brazil’s Dommo Energia SA, plan to sell shares in the offering, Reuters reported.

There’s plenty of bad debt to go around for investors in distressed assets in China. The question is how to extract value from them. For years, Chinese banks shoveled nonperforming loans to asset managers set up by the government, which sought to get back what they could while warehousing what was irrecoverable. Now, as commercial lenders try to shift record amounts of soured loans off their books, these assets are finding a home outside the state-sanctioned bad debt managers, a Bloomberg View reported.

Billionaire Mike Ashley, vying with creditors for control of Debenhams Plc, is considering an offer that would value the troubled U.K. department-store chain’s equity at 61.4 million pounds ($81 million), Bloomberg News reported. Ashley’s Sports Direct International Plc, which already owns about 30 percent of Debenhams, said it’s weighing a bid worth 5 pence a share in cash. Before going firm on his offer, Ashley is demanding that Debenhams name him chief executive officer and halt a loan process, due to finish Thursday, that would lead to greater control for the company’s lenders.

Embattled Singapore water treatment company Hyflux Ltd.’s survival is looking shakier as disagreements with its rescuer deepen, Bloomberg News reported. Hyflux said in a filing that it disputes certain assertions by SM Investments, the consortium of Indonesian businessmen that had agreed last year to take a majority stake in the firm. At the same time, SM Investments is disagreeing with some terms of the restructuring plan put forward by Hyflux, the filing shows. The disputes heighten the drama of the catastrophic slump of the once-vaunted water and power company.

EU ambassadors backed on Wednesday new rules to facilitate banks’ sales of bad loans on their books but failed to agree on a reform that would make it easier for lenders to recover assets from borrowers who default, Reuters reported. The proposed rules are part of a wider overhaul of EU banking rules and aim to accelerate banks’ efforts to offload soured loans, which have reduced European banks’ ability to lend to households and companies since the 2007-09 global financial crisis.

Brazilian telecommunications firm Oi SA reported a big quarterly loss on Wednesday, sending shares of the heavily indebted company down nearly 5 percent in morning trading, Reuters reported. Oi, Brazil’s largest fixed-line operator, reported a net loss of 3.359 billion reais ($858 million) in the fourth quarter of 2018 late on Tuesday, 65.7 percent more than the loss it reported a year earlier. Total revenue fell 7.9 percent.

Troubled South African retailer Steinhoff said on Tuesday it would place up to 694 million shares in KAP Industrial via an accelerated bookbuilding to raise cash to repay debt and shore up its finances, Reuters reported. The placement, which will be offered to institutional investors only, will result in Steinhoff, which has a 26 percent stake in KAP, no longer holding an interest in the diversified industrial group. Steinhoff in December 2017 admitted accounting irregularities, wiping about 85 percent off its market value and throwing it into a liquidity crisis.