Headlines

Some of the UK’s biggest listed landlords face rent cuts as Debenhams seeks to ease the burden of a store portfolio that includes leases stretching as far as 2083, the Financial Times reported. British Land and Intu have the largest exposure to the struggling retailer, according to data from Colliers International, although people close to both companies insisted their stores were among Debenhams’ most successful. Other groups with significant exposure include Landsec, Capital & Regional and Hammerson, the data shows.

Shareholders in the company that owns Patisserie Valerie are increasingly concerned that the café chain could be sold cheaply or even put into administration after it warned that its accounting problems ran deeper than initially thought, the Financial Times reported. Patisserie Holdings is in urgent talks with its lenders HSBC and Barclays to extend a financing agreement beyond its scheduled expiry on Friday and has retained KPMG to “review all options available” to recover and preserve value.

A company that recorded one of China’s biggest corporate bond defaults is emerging as the most popular name among the nation’s stock traders in 2019, Bloomberg News reported. Wintime Energy Co., a coal miner based in China’s northern Shanxi province, has surged 60 percent this year to lead the benchmark CSI 300 Index. Its shares have rallied as investors wait for it to announce details on restructuring efforts, even as it said it sees uncertainty over repaying a 1 billion yuan ($148 million) bond due next week.

Germany is examining whether it can fix its two largest lenders -- Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG -- by combining them into a national champion that’s once again able to challenge foreign rivals, Bloomberg News reported. History suggests it’s a recipe for more trouble. Spain encouraged the merger of seven failed savings banks into Bankia SA in 2010, only to bail out the combined entity two years later when it collapsed. The U.K. pressed Lloyds Banking Group Plc to swallow failing HBOS Plc in 2008 and a month later had to rescue Lloyds. The U.S.

Air Arabia said on Thursday it has begun legal proceedings against Abraaj founder Arif Naqvi in a court in Sharjah, the latest challenge for the founder of the collapsed private equity firm, Reuters reported. Air Arabia disclosed earlier last year it had an overall exposure of $336 million to Dubai-based Abraaj, which filed for provisional liquidation in the Cayman Islands. Air Arabia said in stock exchange filing that it has filed a “misdemeanor” case against Naqvi in Sharjah, one of the seven emirates in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The filing did not provide more details.

Chinese private companies may face an even more difficult ride in the domestic bond market in 2019 as billions of renminbi in maturing issuance conspire with reduced risk appetite, threatening an even bigger wave of defaults, the Financial Times reported. Last year’s Rmb151bn ($22.3bn) in defaults made it a banner year for credit events in the domestic corporate bond market.

Brazil’s aviation regulator said on Thursday it was going to ground 10 planes operated by Avianca Brasil, 20 percent of its fleet, prompting the carrier to go to court seeking to prevent the decision being enforced, Reuters reported. The regulator, known as ANAC, said it was acting at the request of one of various lessors involved in a festering legal dispute with Avianca Brasil, which filed for bankruptcy last month after falling behind with lease payments.

More small cocoa exporters in Ivory Coast were unable to fulfill their international contracts at the end of last year, and sources at the country’s cocoa board told Reuters that this group asked to postpone 70 percent of October-to-December commitments due to a lack of financing, Reuters reported. Each year, the cocoa board of top grower Ivory Coast (CCC) sells forward most of its expected harvest, a portion of which is allocated to small exporters. In October through December, small exporters were allocated contracts amounting to 180,000 tonnes of cocoa.

Two weeks into 2019, five Chinese companies are already likely to default on 3.5 billion yuan (US$446.25 million) worth of debt, after a record US$17 billion default wave took the country by storm in 2018 amid a worsening economic slowdown and soaring refinancing costs facing the cash-starved private sector, the South China Morning Post reported.

Lebanon’s central bank aims to keep the exchange rate of its pound currency stable in 2019, the bank’s governor said on Wednesday. Riad Salameh also said Lebanese bank deposits climbed by 3.5 percent in 2018, Reuters reported. The comments were his first in public since remarks by the finance minister last week about Lebanon’s public debt triggered concerns that the debt might be restructured, leading to a sell-off in the country’s dollar-denominated sovereign bonds.