Headlines

When President Trump tweeted in August that South Africa was engaged in “the large scale killing” of white farmers to seize their land, the nation’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, didn’t respond personally. A fabricated accusation from the leader of the free world was the least of his problems, Bloomberg News reported. Ramaphosa probably felt his time was better spent doing his job.

The sell-off in the Argentine peso intensified on Friday, with the currency once again approaching record lows following another big drop at the market open, the Financial Times reported. The peso tumbled 4.7 per cent to hit 41.15 per dollar, knocking out its previous closing low of 39.79 and putting it just a hair away from the all time intraday low of 41.36 reached on August 30. The sharp drop follows Thursday’s 2.8 per cent decline and comes despite the IMF agreeing on Wednesday to increase its bailout package to the Latin American country by an extra $7.1bn.

Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings announced on Sunday its first restructuring in six years, done at a time it faces increased challenges from tighter government regulations, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The reshuffle comes as Tencent Holdings, which has seen a hefty fall in market value this year, is facing fresh criticism from analysts and investors unnerved by regulatory roadblocks, a fuzzy overseas strategy and growing debt.

Russian potash producer Uralkali announced legal action against the administrators of the Force India Formula One team on Thursday after having a bid rejected in what it called a “flawed sale process,” Reuters reported. The company said in a statement it was seeking substantial damages in the London High Court for “prejudicial and unequal treatment”. Joint administrators Geoff Rowley and Jason Baker, for FRP Advisory LLP, said they were confident the claim would be dismissed “at the earliest opportunity”.

Agro-industry firms Cargill, Wilmar and Touton have made offers for the liquidated assets of Ivory Coast’s top cocoa exporter SAF-Cacao, bankers and sources at the country’s cocoa board (CCC) said on Thursday. A court ordered the liquidation of SAF-Cacoa, which purchases between 150,000 and 200,000 tonnes of cocoa beans each season, in July over debts it owed to the CCC, Reuters reported. It owes about 80 billion CFA francs ($143.50 million) to the CCC and 160 billion CFA francs to Ivorian banks.

Two years after China’s top banking regulator pushed for market-based workouts for defaulted bonds, local authorities are still putting a heavy hand on negotiations, a review of recent episodes shows. The evidence from several of the record number of defaults this year suggests local officials are moving to keep troubled business from failures that could unleash waves of job losses and the attendant social and economic damage, Bloomberg News reported.

Indian authorities have spent the week containing the collateral damage from a major infrastructure lender struggling to service $12.6 billion in debt, Bloomberg News reported. Next up: Figuring out why the nation’s credit rating agencies didn’t see the crisis coming. IL&FS Group is a vast conglomerate with a complex corporate structure that funds infrastructure projects across the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

The African Development Bank said it’s working with Zimbabwe’s government to find a “sustainable solution” to settle its debt arrears and enable the state to start borrowing again, Bloomberg News reported. Zimbabwe owes multilateral lenders about $1.8 billion. President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said he plans to prioritize the repayment of the loans as he sets about rebuilding an economy destabilized by almost two decades of mismanagement under his predecessor Robert Mugabe. Central bank Governor John Mangudya said last week he expects the arrears to be cleared by September 2019.

Italian bonds and stocks fell along with the euro as investor fears over the country’s 2019 budget were reawakened by last-minute friction among political leaders, Bloomberg News reported. The nation’s benchmark stock index tumbled the most in more than a month following newspaper reports that the Five Star Movement and the League were pushing for extra spending and that budget targets due Thursday could be delayed. Still, demand for Italian debt at an auction of five- and 10-year notes stayed resilient.

A VTB Capital-led consortium has offered to match ArcelorMittal’s 420 billion rupee ($5.8 billion) bid for Essar Steel India Ltd., heating up the long drawn battle for the biggest steel mill being sold under India’s new bankruptcy law, Bloomberg News reported. Numetal Ltd., the consortium led by VTB, is willing to revise its earlier bid of 370 billion rupees for the 10 million tons a year steel manufacturing unit, Mukul Rohatgi, the lawyer representing the company, told the nation’s top court on Thursday.