Headlines

Industrial production in the eurozone showed signs of stabilisation in January across sectors and in most countries, despite a contraction in Germany, the bloc’s biggest economy, the Financial Times reported. Output in the region rose 1.4 per cent from the previous month, rebounding from a decline of 0.9 per cent in December, better than a forecast from analysts in a Reuters poll of 1.0 per cent expansion, Eurostat figures revealed on Wednesday.

Mozambique is seeking the cancellation of government guarantees on debts run up by state-run security firm Proindicus which helped spark a debt crisis in the country, its prime minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday. Mozambique has a case in London's High Court against investment bank Credit Suisse and a number of other parties linked with the $2 billion (£1.5 billion) worth of loans, which have sparked investigations in the United States and Mozambique, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

As the political crisis in Venezuela rumbles on, a number of creditors are squaring up in what promises to be one of the most complicated debt restructurings in history, the Financial Times reported. What will make a workout so tricky to resolve is not just the amount of IOUs sitting on the balance sheet of the South American nation, the fourth-largest economy in the region, but the diversity of its creditor base. In recent months, some aggrieved lenders have filed lawsuits against the government and the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, sparking some unease from the rest.

Standard Chartered Plc may wind up losing less on its biggest bad loan in India. Lenders to bankrupt Essar Steel India Ltd. will consider increasing a payout to Standard Chartered to expedite the sale of the troubled Indian mill to ArcelorMittal, according to people with knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg News reported. That could smooth over a sticking point in months of court battles as the world’s largest steelmaker tries to open shop in the South Asian nation. Standard Chartered has been seeking repayment on about 35.6 billion rupees ($513 million) of loans to Essar Steel.

Regulators in some Asian countries are getting tougher on auditors after landmark defaults, in an increasingly high-stakes game as investors call for earlier warning signs amid expectations for debt failures to mount, Bloomberg News reported. High-profile collapses of commodities trader Noble Group Ltd. and India’s shadow lender Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. have rocked investors over the past year. In China, a spate of defaults has raised concerns over the quality of financial reports.

Bets on beaten-down Chinese distressed bonds could pay off if the nation persists with its credit easing and there’s a sustained rally in the domestic stock market, according to an Asia-based hedge fund that manages $3.5 billion, Bloomberg News reported. Distressed dollar bonds from Chinese issuers have had their best start to a year since 2012. A strategy that includes investing in these notes “could generate out-sized returns” if an improving economy and share gains help investors recover more money from troubled debt, said Kevin Wu, a portfolio manager at Pinpoint Asset Management.

Billionaire Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct International Plc accused Debenhams Plc’s board of misleading shareholders in its Jan. 10 results ahead of the department-store chain’s profit warning last week, Bloomberg News reported.

Turkey’s Cukurova Holding is considering whether to ask Ziraat Bank to restructure a dollar-denominated loan it took out from the state-owned lender five years ago, according to people familiar with the plans. Cukurova has so far only made interest payments on the $1.6 billion loan and will seek a meeting with the bank before a pre-scheduled payment in July, should it decide to ask for the debt to be reorganized, the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private, Bloomberg News reported. The 10-year loan had a three-year grace period.

Saudi conglomerate Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi and Brothers (AHAB) said on Wednesday it had filed last week for a financial restructuring under Saudi Arabia’s new bankruptcy law, as it seeks to end a decade-long dispute with creditors, Reuters reported.  Saudi Arabia’s bankruptcy law, which came into effect in August, is an important step towards making the kingdom more investor friendly, offering a legal framework to struggling companies seeking to restructure debt following the 2009 global financial crisis and, more recently, weaker oil prices.

The new chief of Kazakhstan’s central bank dodged a debt claim in 2014 thanks to a legal system that’s failed to protect lenders from rampant defaults and repeated crises, Bloomberg News reported. In 2014, Yerbolat Dossayev and three business partners were given a reprieve on repaying 1.9 billion tenge, then worth $13 million, that they’d personally guaranteed to the central Asian country’s biggest bank at the time. It’s not clear whether the debt was ever repaid.