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Eskom on Wednesday dismissed reports that the company was restructuring its debt of more than R300 billion, IOL reported. “We remain committed to executing our approved borrowing programme,” said Andre Pillay, Eskom's group treasurer.

The role of insolvency resolution professionals (IRPs) and their ability to handle day-to day affairs of bankrupt companies has come under the spotlight with the NCLT questioning their decisions in a few recent high-profile insolvency cases, The Hindu reported. At last count, there were over 1,800 registered IRPs wading through a pile of over 9,000 cases. Stakeholders are demanding that the law should allow appointment of insolvency resolution entities rather than IRPs.

Offshore drilling rig contractor Seadrill said on Monday it had successfully completed its reorganisation, emerging from a U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy process launched last September, Reuters reported. The company, once the world’s largest offshore driller by the market capitalisation, was forced to seek protection from creditors when it was unable to repay its debts amassed during boom years to buy new rigs. When oil prices fell in 2014, oil companies cancelled or postponed exploration plans to save cash which reduced demand for offshore drilling rigs.

South Africa’s government won’t bail out 13 municipalities that lost about 1.65 billion rand ($119 million) they invested in VBS Mutual Bank before it collapsed in March, according to Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Zweli Mkhize, Bloomberg News reported. “All these monies were wiped out,” Mkhize said in an interview at Bloomberg’s Johannesburg offices on Friday.

China is zooming to a record year of corporate-bond defaults, with the 2018 total already more than three-quarters of the previous high even before an expected economic slowdown bites, Bloomberg News reported. Chinese companies have reneged on about 16.5 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) of public bond payments so far this year, compared with the high of 20.7 billion yuan seen in all of 2016, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Strains are set to get worse if the trends of credit-rating companies are anything to go by -- agencies including Dagong Global Rating Co.

The most important passage in Steinhoff International Holdings NV’s regulatory filing late Friday, was a section attesting that management still believes the retailer is a going concern. A formality for most companies, Steinhoff’s confidence that it can keep the lights on isn’t self-evident. The acquisitive South African group’s shares have lost almost all their value and its bonds trade at a steep discount following a warning of accounting regularities and the resignation of its chief executive, which triggered a liquidity crisis in December, a Bloomberg View reported.

Eurozone manufacturers battled a sharp increase in costs in June as global trade tensions pushed up prices of steel and other metals, the Financial Times reported. Business confidence sagged among Germany factory executives, who fretted over a “cooling market, tariffs and supply constraints”, according to IHS Markit, which compiles the closely-watched purchasing managers’ surveys for the major European economies. Growth in the powerhouse sector had “consistently slowed” in Germany through the first half of 2018, IHS Markit said.

Tata Steel Ltd will be able to nearly double its capacity in India as a deal between its British entity and Germany's ThyssenKrupp will reduce the Indian parent's debt, the chairman of the company said on Monday. Tata Steel and ThyssenKrupp signed a deal on Saturday after months of negotiations to form Europe's second biggest steel company in which Tata and ThyssenKrupp will have a 50:50 partnership, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Global worries over trade wars, central bank rate hikes and geopolitical instability have hammered emerging-market debt in recent months. The fact is, over the past decade, many developing and low-income countries have simply borrowed too much, a Bloomberg View reported. They borrowed from the markets, from banks and from other countries. In particular, they borrowed from China, which has averaged more than $100 billion in annual financing commitments since 2010. Those bills are now coming due.

A special task force investigating the multibillion-dollar scandal that has engulfed state fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB, said it has frozen as many as 408 bank accounts, linked to 81 individuals and 55 companies, with funds totaling $273 million (1.1 billion ringgit), The Wall Street Journal reported. “These accounts are believed to have links to the misappropriation and misuse of 1MDB funds,” the task force said in a news release Monday. They involved around 900 transactions made between March 2011 and September 2015, it said.