Headlines

Jordan’s Prime Minister Hani Mulki resigned Monday after thousands protested in recent days against his government’s plan to increase taxes, causing uncertainty in a country that is a vital U.S. ally in the region, The Wall Street Journal reported. King Abdullah II has accepted the resignation of Mr. Mulki’s government, Jordan’s Royal Court said. The king thanked the prime minister in a statement for his service and dedication in making difficult and unpopular decisions. The resignation appears aimed at alleviating tensions after intensifying calls for Mr.

Birds Eye owner Nomad Foods took on additional debt to fund the €225 million acquisition this year of Irish frozen pizza-maker Goodfellas, before receiving the threat of a credit downgrade on Monday after sealing another leveraged deal, the Irish Times reported. Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgraded the outlook on its rating on Nomad Foods creditworthiness on Monday to “negative” from “stable” after the company announced the new €240 million debt-funded purchase of UK-based frozen food manufacturer of Yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes Aunt Bessies.

White Plains lawyer Michael E. Foreman has been appointed to help a Singapore company restructure $325 million in debt in a rare Chapter 15 cross-border bankruptcy, Westfair Business Publications reported. Blue Ocean Resources Pte. defaulted on notes due in 2020 and has filed a “scheme of arrangement” under the Companies Act in the Republic of Singapore. Blue Ocean is an investment and trading subsidiary of PT Central Proteina Prima Tbk, an aquaculture company based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Creditors have approved the reorganization plan proposed in Singapore.

India’s two-year-old bankruptcy law, which gives creditors more power to restructure troubled companies, is luring more and more offshore investors from as far as Canada to buy the nation’s bad debt, Bloomberg News reported. Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, a Canadian pension fund manager, has made $600 million available to Edelweiss Group for investment in local distressed assets, according to R.K. Bansal, an adviser for Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Co. Hong Kong-based SSG Capital Management Ltd.

China’s fast-growing dollar-bond market is facing a fresh test as investors that counted on a type of credit-protection pledge seldom seen elsewhere find out just what those promises actually mean, Bloomberg News reported. So-called keepwell provisions, disproportionately seen in the offshore Chinese debt market the past several years, are a sort of gentleman’s agreement - a commitment to maintain an issuer’s solvency which stops short of a payment guarantee from the parent company. Now, two issuers of debt with keepwell provisions, China Energy Reserve & Chemicals Group Co.

A Saudi conglomerate can’t collect damages from a former manager it blamed for a multibillion-dollar fraud against 100 banks because the family-owned company was complicit in the scheme, a Cayman Islands court ruled. The 1,348-page ruling issued Thursday strikes at the heart of a dramatic, decade-long family feud over Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers Co., known as AHAB, whose 2009 default was among the largest of the global credit crisis, Bloomberg News reported.

Turkish banks’ shares fell for a fourth day and are on track for the biggest weekly decline in almost two years as Fitch Ratings is said to take some Turkish lenders to rating watch negative, Bloomberg News reported. Fitch Ratings has prepared a report on Turkish banks, according to two people with direct knowledge of the issue and who asked not to be named because it hasn’t been published by Fitch. Report takes some Turkey banks to rating watch negative, according to one of the people.

Deutsche Bank AG’s new chief executive officer, Christian Sewing, suffered a fresh setback in his efforts to reinvigorate Europe’s largest investment bank as S&P Global Ratings cut the lender’s credit rating. S&P reduced the rating by one notch to BBB+, the third-lowest investment grade, citing “significant execution risk” after several management changes and strategy updates in past years, Bloomberg News reported. Shares of the lender rebounded from a record low as the credit rating company said Deutsche Bank has good capital and liquidity buffers.

China’s banks, scrambling to adjust to the government’s deleveraging campaign, are likely to add to pressures on the corporate bond market as they shed more of their massive note holdings and de-risk their balance sheets, Bloomberg News reported. Further payment problems are likely in a market that has already seen at least 14 corporate bond defaults this year, according to Logan Wright, Hong Kong-based director at research firm Rhodium Group LLC.

Barbados has announced an “emergency plan” to tackle its mounting economic crisis, including restructuring its public debt, after the Caribbean country’s new government discovered that its liabilities were much worse than thought, reaching 175 per cent of gross domestic product, the Financial Times reported. The Barbados Labour Party, led by Mia Mottley, came to power in an election in late May, propelled by the failure of a tough austerity programme implemented by her predecessor to turnround the island’s economic and fiscal crisis.