Headlines

African leaders attending this week's summit with China don't think that cooperation between the continent and Beijing has added to their debt burden, the Chinese government's top diplomat said on Thursday. Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged $60 billion (46 billion pounds) to African nations at Monday's opening of a China-Africa forum on cooperation, matching the size of funds offered at the last summit in Johannesburg in 2015, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

S&P Global Inc. is developing a custom credit-rating scale for China that will likely mean more triple-A’s, worrying investors about inflated grades, The Wall Street Journal reported. The credit-rating company, which is setting up an independent business in China, recently said it will tailor a system for rating bonds from businesses, local governments and other issuers there.

China has agreed to restructure some of Ethiopia’s debt, including a loan for a $4 billion railway linking its capital Addis Ababa with neighbouring Djibouti, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Thursday. Abiy described the rescheduling as limited, but added that repayment of the railway debt has been extended by 20 years, Reuters reported. Landlocked Ethiopia and the Red Sea state inaugurated the railway in January, with 70 percent of the total cost covered through a loan from the Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM).

Steinhoff International Holdings NV ex-Chief Executive Officer Markus Jooste said the origin of the global retailer’s near-collapse was a protracted dispute with former partner Andreas Seifert, the latest example of a senior figure blaming others for the crisis, Bloomberg News reported. The legal battle with Seifert, mainly over the valuation and ownership of German furniture chain POCO, led to investigations by European regulators and tax authorities that attracted the attention of Steinhoff’s auditors at Deloitte LLP, Jooste told lawmakers in Cape Town on Wednesday.

Investor anxiety about a missed debt payment by one of the world’s largest developing nations is jacking up the cost of credit-default swaps from the "BATS" -- Brazil, Argentina, Turkey and South Africa -- to multi-year highs, Bloomberg News reported. Argentina’s implied default probability over the next five years climbed this month to 41 percent, the highest since Mauricio Macri’s government ended the nation’s decade-long legal battle with most holdout creditors. Turkey’s implied default odds during that span rose to 31 percent, the highest since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Dubai’s economic downturn is starting to weigh on some of the emirate’s biggest state-linked companies, Bloomberg News reported. S&P Global Ratings cut the credit worthiness of Dubai’s utility monopoly and a company that owns properties in Dubai’s financial center. Explaining its decision, S&P said it was concerned that Dubai’s deteriorating “credit conditions” may affect the ability to provide extraordinary support to state-related firms if needed. The move is the latest sign that one of the most diversified economies in the Middle East is coming under pressure.

UK restaurant chain Gaucho is to be bought out of administration by two banks Investec and SC Lowry, as part of a rescue deal that will keep open all 16 Gaucho restaurants and save about 750 jobs, the Financial Times reported. The deal is subject to Gaucho’s creditors accepting a “ company voluntary arrangement”, an agreement that allows ailing businesses to restructure their debt.

Since Italy’s coalition government took power, its first budget plans have loomed as the likely trigger for a showdown between Rome and Brussels. The anti-establishment Five Star party and anti-migrant League campaigned on a platform of expensive policies such as a flat tax reform and a universal basic income, ambitions that seemed likely to collide with a European Commission deeply nervous about Italy’s vast debt pile, the Financial Times reported.

Optimism in Spain’s services sector fell to a five-year low in August, amid rising input costs and a slowdown in new business growth, according to data released on Wednesday by IHS Markit, the Financial Times reported. Spain’s purchasing managers’ index fell to 52.1, below an analyst forecast of 52.7 according to a Reuters poll, as new orders rose at their slower pace since 2016. Although executives felt that the sector had continued to grow overall — a reading over 50 denotes growth — this was at a “much weaker” rate than earlier in the year, said economists at IHS Markit.

The new hot thing for Chinese savers is about as old and boring as it gets. Bank deposits, shunned for years by the nation’s return-hungry masses, are suddenly looking attractive again as higher-yielding investments prove riskier than many had anticipated, Bloomberg News reported. China’s household deposits rose in July at the fastest annual rate in a year -- an influx that analysts say may accelerate after the nation’s stock market sank at the quickest pace worldwide, hundreds of peer-to-peer lending platforms shuttered and companies defaulted on their debt at an unprecedented rate.