Headlines

Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani has helped his younger brother avert a stint in jail, stepping in to make an $80 million payment for his sibling whose telecom-to-infrastructure empire is struggling with debt, Bloomberg News reported. The embattled former billionaire, Anil Ambani, thanked his brother Mukesh and sister-in-law after Anil’s Reliance Communications Ltd. completed the required 5.5 billion rupee ($80 million) payment to a local unit of Ericsson AB for past maintenance services provided to his group.

Jet Airways Ltd said here on Monday it has grounded four more planes and would delay paying interest on maturing debt in a fresh sign of deepening liquidity crisis engulfing the Indian carrier saddled with over $1 billion debt, Reuters reported. India's second-largest carrier has delayed payments to its pilots, suppliers and lessors for months and defaulted on loans, as it battles intensifying competition, a weak rupee and rising fuel costs. The airline said it will delay paying interest to its debenture holder, due March 19, owing to financial constraints.

Saudi Arabia, along with Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, came to the rescue of Bahrain last year when a prolonged period of lower oil prices pushed its public debt to nearly 93 percent of annual economic output, Reuters reported. Their $10 billion bailout pledge, along with Bahrain’s inclusion in JPMorgan’s emerging market indexes, have transformed its bonds from a busted bet to a boon for investors. The price of Bahrain’s 2028 dollar bonds has risen by a third from a record low last June when the country looked in danger of default.

A rising share of unfilled job positions in Germany, despite weakening industrial production, pushed the eurozone’s vacancy rate to a record, the Financial Times reported. In contrast, vacancies remained low in most peripheral economies. The region’s job vacancy rate accelerated to 2.3 per cent in the final quarter of last year, compared with 2.1 per cent in the previous three months and the highest ratio since records began in 2009, Eurostat data released on Monday revealed.

The "grey rhino" risks in China's financial sector are rising and regulators will step up efforts to control them, a senior official at the People's Bank of China said in remarks published on Monday. Chinese policymakers have warned of potential "grey rhino" events - highly obvious yet ignored threats - as the nation faces increasing uncertainties as the economy slows amid a trade war with the United States, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Delek Drilling said on Monday it was considering listing its holdings in the Leviathan natural gas field off Israel's Mediterranean coast on the London Stock Exchange as part of a corporate restructuring, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Delek Drilling, a unit of conglomerate Israel's Delek Group, said it would retain its holdings in the Tamar and Dalit gas sites, also off Israel's coast, under the plan being considered.

“When it comes to money, we have serious problems,” businessman Mehmet Naci Topsakal confided to Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a ceremony to mark the construction of a new Istanbul arts centre in February, the Financial Times reported. Visibly uncomfortable, he blamed the housing agency, the state body that oversees hundreds of projects nationwide, for “ruining us” and asked the Turkish leader for a fuller discussion at a later date.

As China’s $9.1tn shadow lending industry cools for the first time in a decade, private corporate defaults are on the rise, the Financial Times reported. Shadow banking, an industry of loosely regulated, high-yield lending outside the formal banking sector, has attracted the wrath of the country’s financial watchdogs in recent years. Regulators launched an aggressive campaign against the sector starting in 2017.

A Brazilian appeals judge on Monday lifted an order that allowed struggling carrier Avianca Brasil to operate 10 of its planes despite missed leasing payments, Reuters reported. The decision is the latest development in a bitter legal fight between lessors and the carrier, which is going through bankruptcy protection, and which could disrupt the airline’s ability to complete scheduled flights. Avianca Brasil could still seek an emergency injunction in Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice.

Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank have formally opened talks on a controversial merger that would reshape Germany’s financial sector and create the eurozone’s second-largest lender by assets, the Financial Times reported. The senior management of Germany’s two largest listed lenders said on Sunday they had begun exploratory talks, after the executive boards of both banks agreed to evaluate the benefits of a tie-up.