Headlines

India’s finance industry is letting a good crisis go to waste by not learning from it. The sudden $12.8 billion bankruptcy of infrastructure lender IL&FS Group, currently sequestered under a government-blessed, out-of-court process, underscores India’s lack of preparedness to handle a big shift in lending in recent years — away from banks, a Bloomberg View reported.

Waagner-Biro, the steel engineering company who constructed the remarkable steel dome over Jean Nouvel‘s Louvre Abu Dhabi, has announced insolvency, designboom reported. The Austrian firm’s financial issues are reportedly due to late payments and unexpected costs incurred by Louvre Abu Dhabi for the steel structure. The dome, which stretches 178 meters in diameter and is made from steel and aluminium, cost €80 million to construct.

Businesses are sidestepping tax bills amounting to tens of millions of pounds using an insolvency procedure that the government is considering banning, the Financial Times reported. That is the conclusion of an independent panel set up by the government to monitor the use of insolvency arrangements known as “pre-packs”. The Pre Pack Pool says some businesses have used the procedure to shed tax bills and pension liabilities.

Nigeria’s fourth-biggest wireless carrier 9mobile, formerly known as Etisalat Nigeria, repaid part of a loan taken from a group of banks following its acquisition by Teleology Holdings Ltd, Bloomberg News reported. “The money has been distributed to the banks,” Abiola Rasaq, head of investor relations at Lagos-based United Bank for Africa Plc, one of the institutions that received a payment, said by phone. The reimbursement is expected to improve the asset quality of the creditor banks that had classified the loan as non-performing, he said.

It’s been a tough couple years for Pactera Technology International Ltd. The tech outsourcing arm of embattled Chinese conglomerate HNA Group Co. has been ditched by Bank of America Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., sued over a collapsed acquisition and cut deep into junk territory by Moody’s Investors Service, Bloomberg News reported.

Noble Group Ltd. extended the deadline for its marathon restructuring until Dec. 11 to address regulators’ concerns, a week after Singaporean authorities began an investigation into the embattled commodity trader’s finances, Bloomberg News reported. The company on Sunday moved the deadline for the $3.5 billion debt restructuring back by two weeks. Noble said that Singapore’s Securities Industry Council extended a key waiver to allow the deadline to be pushed back.

Insolvencies among Canadian corporations climbed 4.6 percent in the third quarter, the sharpest increase in at least six years, a sign higher borrowing costs may be taking a toll on businesses. Some 826 companies filed for insolvency in the three months through September, compared with 790 in the same period a year earlier, the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcies reported Friday, Bloomberg News reported. Quebec, Alberta and Manitoba saw the biggest increases. By sector, retail trade, transportation, construction and manufacturing were among the hardest hit.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday that the government’s priority is to protect jobs at Italian aircraft maker Piaggio Aerospace, and will discuss the matter in the coming hours. Piaggio Aerospace has asked the government to be put under special administration after a 2017 turnaround plan failed to produce the expected results, Reuters reported. The company, a unit of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign fund Mubadala, produces unmanned drones used by the Italian airforce.

A surge in Oman’s international bond yields suggests that, with investor concerns about its twin deficits growing, the country is fast replacing Bahrain as the weak debt market link among Gulf Arab oil exporters, Reuters reported. Oman’s January 2023 dollar bond yield has jumped 81 basis points since end-September, making Oman by far the worst performer in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. Saudi Arabia, the second worst, has seen its March 2023 bond yield rise just 44 bps, amid concern the killing of dissident Jamal Khashoggi could hurt ties with the West.

Italian households have refused to help finance their government’s deficit-boosting budget, with a landmark retail bond sale proving to be a flop, the Financial Times reported. This week’s BTP Italia sale — which closes today after running for four days — has raised €2.2bn from retail and institutional investors, well below the usual €7 to 8bn scale that such bonds reach. The European Commission’s decision on Wednesday to move towards enforcement action against Italy over its budget proposals failed to entice a late wave of investors into the deal.