Headlines

China’s banks’ urgent want for cash is threatening to overload the country’s fledgling convertible-bond market. Four lenders are due to sell as much as 146 billion yuan ($22 billion) of the hybrid securities by the end of June after the regulator approved the deals in recent weeks, Bloomberg News reported. That includes what could be the largest such offering China’s domestic market has ever seen: Bank of Communications Co.’s 60 billion yuan issue. The fundraising total would be twice the amount raised in all of 2018, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Creditors holding defaulted debt issued by Venezuela and its state-run oil company sent an envoy to Caracas for talks with the government’s legal advisers, according to two people familiar with the matter. A small U.S.

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA is preparing to sell covered bonds and will contact possible investors as soon as next week, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Monte Paschi is attempting to issue the debt after it was unable to complete the second tranche of a bond sale last year amid market turmoil, Bloomberg News reported. The lender said in a statement late Friday that the European Central Bank warned in a letter that its capital position was weaker after abandoning last year’s sale.

More than 20 U.K. retail chains instructed accountancy firm Deloitte LLP in the past two months to assess whether they are able to restructure their debt, the Sunday Times reported, without saying where it got the information, Bloomberg News reported. The accountancy firm is considering whether the chains -- mostly fashion and homeware retailers -- can use a so-called company voluntary arrangement to close stores. The process allows businesses to leave behind lease liabilities and keep operating, but puts a financial burden on landlords.

Top Lebanese officials, including the president, the caretaker prime minister and the central bank chief, are scrambling to reassure bond investors panicking over the risk of debt restructuring after initial efforts at damage-control failed to calm markets, Bloomberg News reported. In a meeting on Sunday at the presidential palace, the officials said Lebanon was discussing how to reduce the budget deficit and implement fiscal reforms -- but would not restructure its debt.

Britain’s Ovo Energy said on Friday it had taken over the customers of independent power supplier Economy Energy, which ceased trading this week. Economy Energy became the ninth supplier to stop trading in the past year, after an attempt to increase competitiveness prompted the launch of dozens of independent traders in Britain, Reuters reported. Ovo said it now had 1.5 million retail customers in Britain after taking over Economy Energy’s 235,000 clients as well as the 290,000 customers of Spark Energy, another small company that stopped operations last year.

Aircastle is set to repossess 10 jets from Avianca Brasil, the country’s No. 4 airline, after a bankruptcy hearing on Monday, a source familiar with the matter said, potentially disrupting flights for thousands of passengers, Reuters reported. The 10 Airbus A320 planes represent 20 percent of Avianca Brasil’s current fleet, according to data provided by Brazil’s aviation regulator, raising doubts about the carrier’s ability to fly its full flight schedule if the aircraft are seized. And it could lose more planes in the future.

Norwegian offshore drilling rig firm Seadrill Ltd said on Thursday that Chief Financial Officer Mark Morris will step down following completion of the company’s financial restructuring, Reuters reported. The company, controlled by Norwegian-born billionaire John Fredriksen, said it has begun a formal search process and that Morris will remain in the role until the end of June to make the transition possible. Separately, Seadrill Partners said Morris would step down as chief executive officer of that firm at the end of June.

French manufacturing output fell in November, a further indicator that trade uncertainty and political tension in Europe could be cooling the eurozone, the Financial Times reported. The 1.3 per cent month on month slide in industrial output was worse than the forecast in a Reuters survey of no change, following two months of growth. Manufacturing was also down 1.4 per cent in November, a 1.2 per cent decrease from November last year, the French National Institute for Economic Studies reported on Thursday. Manufacturing output remained down 1.0 per cent over the quarter.

France’s top central banker has warned the European Central Bank to take a “gradual and pragmatic” approach to ditching its crisis-era stimulus, as the world’s monetary policymakers react to fears of a global economic slowdown, the Financial Times reported. In dovish remarks François Villeroy de Galhau, the Banque de France governor and a member of the ECB’s governing council, said in Luxembourg on Thursday that the ECB should keep its “options open in the face of current uncertainty”.