Headlines

India’s debt-laden Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) said on Monday it received more than a dozen expressions of interest for its stakes in subsidiaries IL&FS Securities Services, and ISSL Settlement & Transaction Services, Reuters reported. IL&FS, a major infrastructure financing and development company, earlier this month started work on plans to sell off assets, part of a wider restructuring of the group after it defaulted on some of its debt.

Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht SA has hired investment bank Moelis & Co. and law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton to discuss restructuring of its debt with investors, the company said in a statement on Monday, Reuters reported. Odebrecht’s engineering unit OEC and its advisers will discuss with investors restructuring of $3 billion bonds issued by Odebrecht Finance Limited. The conglomerate decided not to pay $11.5 million in interest on the 2025 bonds after the end of the 30-day grace period, the statement added.

Mario Draghi has insisted that the European Central Bank still plans to halt its €2.6tn stimulus programme at the end of this year, arguing that inflation is set to increase despite recent disappointing economic data, the Financial Times reported. Appearing before the European Parliament, the ECB president said the final decision to end the asset purchase programme would be taken next month “subject to” data confirming the bank’s prediction that inflation was going to “gradually rise”.

A deepening row between Russia and Ukraine ignited by a naval skirmish at the weekend has sparked falls in both countries’ financial markets, the Financial Times reported. Ukraine’s government bonds issued in foreign currency faced significant drops in price, which sent yields rising. Yield on a 10-year dollar-denominated bond maturing in November 2028 jumped 38.7 basis points to 10.832 per cent, its highest level since issuance. A 15-year dollar bond that matures in September 2032 faced a similar rise in yield to 10.385 per cent, also a record high for the paper.

The cash-strapped construction unit of Odebrecht, the Brazilian group at the centre of a corruption scandal that has rocked Latin America, said Monday it will miss a debt payment, triggering a restructuring of billions in bonds, the Financial Times reported. The company said it would not pay an $11.5m coupon on its 2025 bond due on Monday “to preserve liquidity”.

Singaporean regulators investigating Noble Group Ltd. have focused their questions so far on the company’s use of mark-to-market accounting, according to people familiar with the matter. The struggling commodity trader was thrown into fresh crisis last week after Singapore announced a three-agency probe into Noble’s accounts just days before a marathon $3.5 billion debt restructuring was due to complete, Bloomberg News reported. On Sunday, Noble said it would delay the deadline for that deal to Dec.

Greece’s Eurobank Ergasias SA isn’t waiting around for a state rescue, with a plan to sell about 7 billion euros ($8 billion) of troubled loans and merge with a real estate fund, Bloomberg News reported. As part of the plan, the bank will merge with real estate fund Grivalia Properties REIC to create a new business named Eurobank, the two companies said. It will then shift non-performing debt to a separate vehicle that will issue senior, mezzanine and junior notes that the bank will initially retain. Some of the lower level notes would then be sold off to investors.

Unirule Institute of Economics, a Beijing-based think tank advocating free market policies, “will cease public activities under its name temporarily”, its parent company said. Beijing Unirule Consulting Co Ltd said bit.ly/2BwSir1 on Monday its license was revoked after the company received an "Administrative Penalty Notice" on Oct. 22, Reuters reported.

Prosecutors are still considering charges against one suspect arising from an investigation into State assets agency Nama’s €1.6 billion sale of loans to Northern Ireland-based developers, The Irish Times reported. Nama sold €6 billion worth of property loans to Northern-based developers to US company Cerberus in April 2014 for €1.6 billion in a deal that sparked criminal and parliamentary investigations.

Minister of Justice Sacky Shanghala says there is a need for the Law Reform and Development Commission (LRDC) to also include cross-border insolvency when formalising the Insolvency Bill that will eventually replace the Insolvency Act of 1936, AllAfrica.com reported. Cross-border insolvency, also referred to as international insolvency, regulates the treatment of financially distressed debtors when they have assets or creditors in more than one country.