Headlines

Since taking over as the main supervisor of the euro zone’s largest lenders, the European Central Bank has waged a war against sickly lenders. The regulator has forced banks to be more open about the value of the exposures sitting on their books, and urged them to write down bad loans faster, a Bloomberg View reported. All this should not only bolster financial stability, it should also help growth: providing less forbearance to “zombie” borrowers ought to free up credit for more promising startups.

In a remarkable warning to India’s elite, the nation’s top court said it will put one of the country’s most prominent business executives behind bars unless his group pays its dues, Bloomberg News reported. It’s the latest twist in a dispute that helped push billionaire Anil Ambani’s mobile-phone carrier into bankruptcy proceedings and cast an unflattering light on the Indian mogul, who’s the younger brother of Asia’s richest man.

Deutsche Bank AG plans to start rebuilding its South African workforce just months after scaling back staff and cutting costs as part of a global restructuring, Bloomberg News reported. “The hiring we’re currently pursuing is geared toward enhancing the areas where we have global and local strengths, such as fixed income,” South Africa Chief Executive Officer Muneer Ismail said in an interview on Tuesday.

Concerns over global recession jumped to the top of the worry list for investors in corporate bonds as market stress in late 2018 and expectations for further weakness in economic data dent investor confidence, a new poll shows. Almost a third of credit investors surveyed by Bank of America Merrill Lynch see the risk of a global recession as their top worry, the highest for a single concern since mid 2017, the Financial Times reported.

Zimbabwe’s government dropped its insistence that a quasi-currency known as bond notes are at par with the dollar as it overhauled foreign-exchange trading and effectively devalued the securities, Bloomberg News reported. The measures are a step toward trying to create a new currency and stabilize Zimbabwe’s economy, which has been plunged into crisis as a shortage of foreign currency stoked the fastest increase in consumer prices in more than a decade and caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

Debenhams Plc’s lenders are prepared to grant the struggling department store chain more credit in an effort to ward off a potential low-ball buyout from billionaire shareholder Mike Ashley, Bloomberg News reported. After extending a 40 million-pound ($52 million) loan facility to Debenhams last week, the group of about 10 firms including hedge funds Alcentra, Angelo Gordon & Co. and Silver Point Capital is willing to lend further if necessary, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Chinese companies are facing a reality check after years of ramping up debt. A deleveraging campaign that President Xi Jinping began in 2016 to curb risks in the nation’s financial markets has cracked down on shadow banking and tightened rules on asset management. As a result, firms are having a tougher time raising new funds to repay existing debt, leading to a record number of bond defaults and government moves to try to alleviate the liquidity crunch, Bloomberg News reported. The worsening economic climate isn’t helping. The problem is big, with the potential to worsen.

South Africa’s AngloGold Ashanti said on Tuesday it was putting its interests in an Argentine mine up for sale as it looks to focus on operations with a longer shelf life and ability to deliver higher returns, Reuters reported. AngloGold Chief Executive Kelvin Dushnisky, Barrick Gold’s former president, was appointed to head the firm last year and has rolled out plans to streamline its portfolio, set a 15 percent hurdle on returns on investment and cut debt leverage targets to a ratio of 1.0 times net debt to adjusted Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.

Norwegian Air’s shareholders overwhelmingly endorsed on Tuesday the lossmaking airline’s plan for a deeply discounted cash call to help bolster its finances, Chairman Bjoern Kise said. Norwegian Air said on Jan. 29 it would raise 3 billion Norwegian crowns ($348 million) in a rights issue, just days after British Airways owner IAG ruled out a bid for the budget carrier, Reuters reported.

German financial executives do not expect the slowdown in the eurozone’s biggest economy to cease any time soon, according to a closely watched survey released on Tuesday that showed a persisting decline in confidence, the Financial Times reported. The Zew Indicator of Current Conditions in Germany fell 12.6 points month-on-month to 15 in February, its lowest point since 2014 and well below expectations for 23 according to analysts polled by Reuters. That follows a steep fall, to a four-year low, in January.