Headlines

Isla Rowntree, the founder of British children’s bike maker Islabikes, has resorted to stacking spare parts in meeting spaces and office rooms as she gets ready for a potentially chaotic no-deal Brexit next month, Reuters reported. But the inconvenience of finding the space for six months’ worth of stock is small compared with the financial consequences, she says.

Distressed-debt investors are deeply divided when it comes to how much bondholders can recover after a Venezuelan restructuring, Bloomberg News reported. Doomsayers argue that a nation suffering Latin America’s worst humanitarian catastrophe has greater concerns than paying investors. Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann, an informal adviser to U.S.-backed National Assembly leader Juan Guaido, has said creditors must take a big haircut.

India should kick-start private investment via policy measures or tax breaks if it does not want to stay stuck at a 7 percent growth rate, Uday Kotak, managing director and chief executive of Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd, told CNBCTV18 in an interview, Reuters reported. “India has the fundamental capacity and we need to create a situation where the ground capacity will be growing at somewhere between 8 and 9 percent,” he said on the sidelines of an event organised by Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.

The Turkish owner of Godiva chocolates and McVitie’s biscuits has stepped off the acquisition trail. After years of global expansion, Yildiz Holding AS is speeding up asset sales to focus on its core business and underpin Turkey’s largest loan restructuring deal, which it struck with lenders last year, Bloomberg News reported. The Istanbul-based food producer plans to seek partners in units including Godiva’s business in Japan and some other Asian markets, while exiting non-core assets such as its mining and brick business.

Delta Air Lines Inc. and U.K. discounter EasyJet Plc may invest as much as 400 million euros ($452 million) total in the latest attempt to revamp struggling Italian airline Alitalia SpA, according to people familiar with an initial draft of the plan, Bloomberg News reported. Investors in a group led by rail operator Ferrovie dello Stato SpA are evaluating the financial needs of the “new Alitalia” that would emerge after the second bankruptcy process in a decade, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

ArcelorMittal SA, the world’s biggest steelmaker, has bid 48 billion rupees ($673 million) to acquire Essar’s 1200 megawatt power plant in central India, one of the most prized assets in the debt-ridden group’s power portfolio, Reuters reported. The bid for the power plant once again pits ArcelorMittal chief Lakshmi Mittal against the Ruia family, who are already fighting to prevent their flagship steel asset from falling into the hands of the global steel giant.

British regional airline Flybmi has gone into administration and has cancelled all flights with immediate effect, the company said in a statement on Saturday, blaming Brexit uncertainty as one of the reasons for its collapse, Reuters reported. A spokesperson for British Midland Regional Ltd said the company had taken the decision due to increased fuel and carbon costs and to uncertainty arising from Britain’s plans to leave the European Union on March 29. The airline, based in the English East Midlands, operates 17 planes flying to 25 European cities.

Troubled outsourcing group Interserve would have to pay £66 million immediately to lenders if its largest shareholder Coltrane blocks the debt restructuring deal and removes some board members, Sky News reported on Thursday. The company will also have to repay “tens of millions of pounds” if its Chief Financial Officer Mark Whiteling is removed from the board, the report said.

Another acquisitive Chinese company is wobbling. Less than five years old, China Minsheng Investment Group Corp. has spent more than $4 billion on investments and amassed $34 billion of debt, but recently almost failed to make a bond repayment, Bloomberg News reported. CMIG joins the likes of HNA Group Co. and Anbang Insurance Group Co. in struggling to repay debt after embarking on a spending spree.

Last year marked the deepest deterioration in Asian liquidity conditions since 2008. While it’s nowhere close to over, the worst of the squeeze may have passed, a Bloomberg View reported. The gears of the region’s asset markets could turn more smoothly in the second half of the year. The signals are faint, so they’re easy to miss. In India, shadow banks’ liquidity crunch is still dangerously close to becoming an insolvency crisis for property developers. In China, economists’ forecasts of large-scale monetary stimulus are yet to materialize.