Headlines

Steinhoff International said on Thursday its Mattress Firm Inc unit, the largest U.S. mattress retailer, emerged out of bankruptcy with access to $525 million in exit financing, within two months of filing for Chapter 11 protection, Reuters reported. Mattress Firm also closed about 660 underperforming stores, said Steinhoff, which has been working on a deal to restructure the debt of some units after revealing multi-billion-euro holes in its balance sheet. The store closures still leave the Houston-based company with about 2,600 stores across the United States.

Eurozone consumers’ confidence is wavering, with a closely watched indicator of sentiment at its lowest level since March 2017 amid uncertainty over global economic growth and rising volatility in financial markets, the Financial Times reported. The European Commission’s headline consumer sentiment indicator dropped to -3.9 in November, having fallen sharply since the start of the year, according to official data published on Thursday. Economists polled by Thomson Reuters had expected a smaller decline, to -3.

For most of the past 83 years, the directors of the Reserve Bank of India went almost unnoticed as they met for regular board meetings to discuss mostly administrative affairs, the Financial Times reported. But when the 18 central board members filed in for this week’s meeting at the RBI’s Mumbai headquarters, they were the object of a media frenzy, with additional police drafted in to monitor a gaggle of cameramen jostling outside the building’s fortified entrance. For the past month, India’s central bank has been at the centre of a political storm like few others in its history.

With sterling debt investors shaken by the growing strain on the UK high street, British bed seller Dreams is turning to an unusual source of funding: Sweden. Owner Sun Capital Partners this week began marketing a €175m high-yield bond under Swedish law to fund a “dividend recapitalisation” of Dreams, a term for when private equity groups layer debt on a company to take money out for themselves, the Financial Times reported. The Florida-based firm bought the bed retailer out of administration five years ago and unsuccessfully sought to sell the business last year.

Struggling children’s goods retailer Mothercare on Thursday said negative press coverage in the past year had damaged its brand, causing sales in the UK to decline, the Financial Times reported. Mark Newton-Jones, chief executive, said that while he was not blaming the media for reporting the company’s difficulties, internal research “clearly showed that the Mothercare brand suffered damage from coverage of store closures”.

Some Chinese developers were quick to complete the bulk of their refinancing early in the year, Bloomberg News reported. Those who waited now risk paying dearly for their tardiness, with borrowing costs doubling since January.

Preliminary figures compiled by Venezuela’s central bank indicate that the crisis-wracked nation’s economy contracted 16.6 percent in 2017, according to two people with direct knowledge of the estimates, Bloomberg News reported. For the first time since 2016, the bank is preparing a raft of macroeconomic indicators for the International Monetary Fund to avoid sanctions including a possible expulsion from the lender. Bank technicians began working extended shifts and weekends earlier this month to deliver new growth and inflation data and meet a strict Nov.

Italian aircraft maker Piaggio Aerospace has asked the government to be put under special administration after a 2017 turnaround plan failed to produce the expected results, the company said on Thursday, Reuters reported. “The prolonged uncertainty and present market conditions make the company no longer financially sustainable,” it said in a statement. Piaggio Aerospace, a unit of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign fund Mubadala, produces unmanned drones used by the Italian airforce.

Sri Lanka's largest party warned Tuesday that the island could default on its debt as Moody's slashed its credit rating and a bitter power struggle dragged into a fourth week, Daily Mail reported. The South Asian nation has been gripped by an unprecedented political crisis since the president sacked his prime minister on October 26 and appointed former strongman Mahinda Rajapakse in his place. Ranil Wickremesinghe, the ousted premier and leader of the United National Party -- the largest single party in parliament -- refused to step down, declaring his sacking illegal.

Therium Group Holdings Ltd., a leading provider of litigation finance globally with over $800 million of assets under management, has appointed Stephen Akers to lead its insolvency funding practice, based in London, Litigation Finance Journal reported. Stephen is one of the world’s leading insolvency practitioners, with a career stretching more than three decades, in which he has worked on some of the most complex, multi-jurisdictional insolvency cases involving substantial litigation.