Headlines

A large creditor of Abraaj Group wants a Cayman Islands court to oversee the debt restructuring of the private-equity firm, adding more legal pressure on a once-rising star of the Middle East investment world, The Wall Street Journal reported. In documents filed Friday in the Cayman Islands court system, private-debt specialist Auctus Fund Ltd. said Abraaj’s holding company and its private-equity unit owes it about $300 million.

Receivers appointed over two Co Wicklow properties have taken legal proceedings claiming the owners of the properties are advertising them for short term rental including on Airbnb and booking.com. Insolvency practitioner Tom Kavanagh was last year appointed receiver by Ennis Property Finance over a property at Waverley Terrace, Bray, the Irish Times reported. It was originally financed with a buy-to-let loan advanced by Bank of Scotland Ireland (BoSI) to Colm Henry, with an address at Rosslea Studio, Adelaide Road, Bray, and to Padraig Henry, with an address at Waverley Terrace.

At least 42 Irish construction companies have gone into liquidation or examinership since the start of this year, prompting a trade body to warn parliamentarians of an insolvency crisis that could hit public projects, Global Construction Review reported. The Construction Industry Federation, and other sources blamed the crisis on the price inflexibility of government contracts colliding with rising costs. Industry figures claim this collision has depressed profit margins to well below the European average.

Hainan Airlines Holding Co. plans to raise as much as 7 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) by selling shares to investors, including an arm of Singapore state investment company Temasek Holdings Pte., as part of a restructuring planned by the unit of Chinese conglomerate HNA Group Co, Bloomberg News reported. The Haikou, Hainan-based carrier is selling up to 20 percent of its Shanghai-listed shares to 10 investors, the company said in a statement on June 9. Proceeds from the sale will be used to fund plane purchases, aviation training, maintenance and airport business.

Steinhoff International Holdings NV’s Austrian unit is in talks with international insurance companies to find a new credit underwriter for its suppliers, Bloomberg News reported. Rudolf Leiner GmbH, a furniture chain also known by its brand name Kika/Leiner, expects to conclude the search next week, Chief Executive Officer Gunnar George said in a statement Friday. George said he’s in close contact with suppliers in the meantime.

As policy makers tighten the liquidity screws in China, what has been a handy window for companies to raise cash could now be closing, Bloomberg News reported. May capped the fourth straight month of contraction in outstanding loans that publicly listed companies got from securities firms through pledging holdings of stock, Moody’s Investors Service data show. While that still left the total, at 1.53 trillion yuan ($240 billion), near a record, it’s been the longest run of declines since the epic 2015 stock-market collapse.

From overburdened tribunals to some bizarre judgments and costly delays, India’s new bankruptcy code has had its share of teething troubles. But the law, which will decide the fate of $210 billion in bad loans, has also broken new ground, a Bloomberg View reported. Take the most recent tweak, for instance. Hapless homebuyers left without apartments by debt-stressed builders will have their status raised to that of financial creditors. That’s highly unusual by global standards. It’s a bold innovation, worthy of emulation by other rapidly urbanizing economies.

German industrial production unexpectedly fell in April, continuing a run of poor economic news from Europe’s largest economy, Bloomberg News reported. The 1 percent drop in output, along with a shock decline in factory orders reported earlier this week, indicates a moderate pace of expansion at the start of the second quarter. A separate report showed that exports fell 0.3 percent in April, while in France, industrial production also declined. The euro fell after the German data and was down 0.2 percent at $1.1772 as of 9:44 a.m. Frankfurt time.

Abraaj dipped into investor funds because of cash shortages at the group, but there is no evidence of embezzlement, a forensic review of two funds at the struggling private equity firm by Deloitte has found, the Financial Times reported. The emerging-markets specialist suffered from a “lack of adequate governance, including segregation of duties, and the overall weakness in the control framework,” according to briefing notes prepared last week for creditors and seen by the Financial Times.

If you are going to go, go big, and get on with it. This advice applies widely, if not universally. Certainly it fits economic interventions. Argentina and the IMF, thankfully, have followed it. The IMF’s financing deal for Argentina, a country facing a falling currency and brutal inflation, was expected to take about six weeks to agree; it took a month, the Financial Times reported. Speculation pegged the value of the package at $30bn or so; it came in at $50bn. The market’s initial response to the surprise has been positive. Argentine bonds rallied on Friday morning.