Headlines

In the world’s most vital maritime chokepoint, through which much of Asian trade passes, a Chinese power company is investing in a deepwater port large enough to host an aircraft carrier, the International New York Times reported. Another state-owned Chinese company is revamping a harbor along the fiercely contested South China Sea. Nearby, a rail network mostly financed by a Chinese government bank is being built to speed Chinese goods along a new Silk Road.

The main contractor of M+, the West Kowloon Cultural District’s contemporary art museum, was fired by the government-appointed management authority on Friday owing to alleged insolvency, Hong Kong Free Press reported. In a press statement, the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) said it has terminated its contract with Hsin Chong Construction Company Limited over the troubled project. Hsin Chong was awarded the HK$5.9 billion contract for multiple buildings in September 2015 after a selective tendering process.

Futuregrowth Asset Management, South Africa’s biggest specialist fixed-income money manager, said it didn’t tell Transnet SOC Ltd. to remove Chief Executive Officer Siyabonga Gama after the state-owned rail and ports operator said auditors couldn’t give its 2018 financial results a clean bill of health, Bloomberg News reported. “The Futuregrowth team has had continuing engagements as a lender to Transnet over many months,” Chief Investment Officer Andrew Canter said in an emailed statement late Monday.

Kenya’s ARM Cement has been put into administration, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a statement on Saturday, days after ARM Cement’s chief executive officer said he was relinquishing his post but staying on its board, Reuters reported. PWC’s Muniu Thoiti and George Weru have been appointed as joint administrators. PWC’s statement, published in local newspapers, said the administration, under Kenya’s Insolvency Act, was effective on Aug. 17.

Greece is about to exit its bailout, a symbolic move past a debt crisis that exploded eight years ago and left the economy, and the lives of its people, completely changed, Bloomberg News reported. At the time of the May 2010 aid package -- the first of three -- politicians from euro-area creditor countries argued the crisis was the result of chronic fiscal and economic indiscipline. To justify breaching a “no bailout clause,” loans were tied to strict conditions, covering fiscal sustainability, financial stability, growth and competitiveness, and reform of public administration and justice.

Venezuela’s debt crisis passed a new milestone as the government missed a principal payment on one of its bonds for the first time this week, boosting arrears on international securities to $6.1 billion, Bloomberg News reported. It was hardly a surprise for investors, who have watched the value of their securities plummet since President Nicolas Maduro announced in November that he would seek to restructure the country’s debt in the midst of an economic crisis.

Ghana is borrowing its way out of a banking crisis. The government of West Africa’s second-biggest economy --- its budget already stretched by interest costs that consume about a third of its revenue -- is piling on debt to cover the liabilities of failed lenders and settle arrears dating back 20 years, Bloomberg News reported. It was left with little choice but to issue bonds to save an industry the International Monetary Fund sees as a financial-stability threat.

Funds run by a host of blue-chip financial houses, including Fidelity and Goldman Sachs, were among those with a significant bet on Turkish debt as the country’s currency crisis deepened after the re-election of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Financial Times reported. Although the Turkish lira ended the week up about 5 per cent, the currency is still down 33 per cent since the start of July, while Turkish equities and bonds have fallen sharply as a diplomatic row with the US adds to investors’ longstanding concerns about the economy’s imbalances and runaway inflation.

The EU’s financial services chief has warned that the bloc’s flagship project to boost private sector investment in business is in jeopardy, with governments lagging in approving the necessary laws, the Financial Times reported. Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission vice-president responsible for the euro, said the EU’s goal of creating a capital markets union by 2019 might not be reached.

Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro announced on Friday a single exchange rate pegged to his socialist government’s petro cryptocurrency, effectively devaluing by 96 percent in a move economists said would fan hyperinflation in the chaotic country, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. In one of the biggest economic overhauls of Maduro's five-year government, the former bus driver and union leader also said he would hike the minimum wage by over 3,000 percent, boost the corporate tax rate, and increase highly-subsidized gas prices in coming weeks.