Headlines

Chinese developer Tahoe Group is seeking to offload a dozen projects that it bought for at least 40 billion yuan (US$5.97 billion) in the past two years, according to sources familiar with the matter, the South China Morning Post reported. It is the latest builder to resort to asset sales to raise cash in the face of mounting debts.

A group of Indian state-run banks want Jet Airways’ embattled founder and Chairman Naresh Goyal to reduce his stake in the carrier to 10 percent, news channel CNBC-TV18 reported on Thursday, quoting sources, Reuters reported. “Banks want Goyal to bring his stake down to 10 percent, below the 17 percent envisaged in the bank-led provisional resolution plan (BLPRP),” sources told CNBC-TV18. The state-run banks are also pushing Goyal to step down, CNBC-TV18 added.

Russian steel and coal producer Mechel said on Thursday its 2018 core earnings fell 7 percent versus the previous year, with lower sales in the mining division only partly offset by higher coal prices, Reuters reported. Mechel, controlled by businessman Igor Zyuzin, said its 2018 earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) were at 75.67 billion roubles ($1.2 billion), down from 81.11 billion in 2017. Mechel, at one point on the brink of bankruptcy, has been in restructuring talks with its lenders for several years.

Sweden's Skanska does not expect to hit an operating margin target for its construction business this year or next, sending its shares down nearly 3 percent on Wednesday, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The Nordic region's biggest building firm, which is also one of the largest in the United States, is restructuring its construction division due to weak profitability and project writedowns, mainly in Poland and the United States.

The creditors of UK restaurant chains Giraffe and Ed’s Easy Diner have approved proposals to shut 27 restaurants and renegotiate leases for at least 13 others, the Financial Times reported. More than three quarters of the restaurant’s creditors voted to approve the plan — known as a company voluntary arrangement — which will see nearly a third of the two chain’s 70 restaurants close, putting 340 employees out of work. Sites include prime locations in Manchester, London and Glasgow. Franchised restaurants, of which there are 17, are not affected by the CVA.

The U.K.’s biggest business lobby group took the rare step of joining forces with labor unions to warn Theresa May that she’s presiding over a “national emergency” on Brexit, Bloomberg News reported. Avoiding a no-deal split with the European Union is “paramount” and securing an extension to the process is “essential,” Confederation of British Industry Director General Carolyn Fairbairn and Trades Union Congress General Secretary Frances O’Grady said in a letter. The two also requested an “urgent meeting” with the prime minister. “Our country is facing a national emergency,” they wrote.

Argentina’s economy sharply contracted in the fourth quarter while unemployment rose, potentially hurting President Mauricio Macri’s approval ratings as he seeks re-election later this year, Bloomberg News reported. Gross domestic product fell 6.2 percent from a year ago, the country’s statistics institute said on Thursday. It was the worst quarterly performance since 2009 after the global financial crisis, although Argentine economic data was considered unreliable until 2016. Analysts had forecast a 6.4 percent contraction.

Soon, the government of Japan might be the only issuer paying less to borrow than Danish homeowners, Bloomberg News reported. Danes are about to learn whether they can get a 30-year mortgage at a fixed rate of 1 percent. That’s less than the governments of Switzerland and Germany pay their long-term investors. Denmark finances its home loans through the world’s biggest covered-bond market. The securities are coveted as some of the safest around, thanks to the huge cover pools backing the debt.

When India’s shadow lenders sneeze, lots of others catch a cold. Debt concerns have pushed funding costs for non-bank financing companies to multi-year highs in recent weeks, Bloomberg News reported. That’s bad news for all the borrowers who rely on the lenders in the world’s fastest-growing major economy -- from poor entrepreneurs getting micro loans for food delivery businesses to property tycoons looking to roll over debt that fueled a construction boom. Read more on that here.

Croatia will decide in coming days whether to place troubled shipbuilder Uljanik into bankruptcy or try to restructure the business at a cost to the state of around one billion euros, a top official said on Wednesday. Last month Uljanik, the country’s largest shipbuilder, chose local rival Brodosplit as a strategic partner to restructure its operations, with Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri acting as an adviser in the process, Reuters reported.