Headlines

Two Chinese groups have renewed their interest in buying a majority stake in National Insurance, Greece’s largest insurer, after a €718m sale agreed with Calamos-Exin, a US-Dutch partnership, collapsed last month, the Financial Times reported. Fosun Investment and Gonbao Investment, the second- and third-ranked bidders, “have returned to the reopened sale process” said one source close to the situation.

Administrators for Beaufort Securities, the disgraced UK broker that was closed down by regulators in March, have said it could cost as much as £100m to return the cash and assets held by the company, currently valued at £550m, to its thousands of private investor clients, the Financial Times reported.

The world’s $164tn debt pile is bigger than at the height of the financial crisis a decade ago, the IMF has warned, sounding the alarm on excessive global borrowing, the Financial Times reported. The fund said the private and public sectors urgently needed to cut debt levels to improve the resilience of the global economy and provide greater firefighting capability if things went wrong. “Fiscal stimulus to support demand is no longer the priority,” the IMF said on Wednesday in a report published at its spring meetings in Washington.

The European Central Bank will probably announce the stress-test results for Greece’s four largest banks on May 4 or May 5, leaving more than three months to sort out any problems before the country’s latest bailout program expires, according to a European Union official familiar with the plan, Bloomberg News reported. The Greek government has nearly 20 billion euros ($24.7 billion) of bailout cash left to shore up banks before the program ends in August. If the banks don’t need the money, it can be used to tackle other needs, such as debt-relief measures.

The least corrupt countries in Europe are home to its most dangerous bond market. Debt issued in Nordic nations requires no credit rating or due diligence, Bloomberg News reported. Companies can claim more or less what they like when selling new debt, according to Norway’s financial-market regulator. Investors are re-learning the oldest maxim in the book -- buyer beware -- with the 350 million euros ($433 million) of junk bonds sold in August by Lebara Group BV, a Netherlands-based provider of international mobile-phone cards.

Two Saudi Arabian-linked banks have become the first lenders with ties to the kingdom to sign a debt settlement plan with Ahmad Hamad al-Gosaibi and Brothers (AHAB), the company's chief executive said, opening the way for the conglomerate to try to push through a multibillion-dollar deal with creditors, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Italian banking stocks rallied and bonds rose on Tuesday after the country's biggest lender, Intesa Sanpaolo, agreed a bad loan sale at favourable conditions, which investors say could help other lenders achieve better terms and boost lending, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Italian banks still hold some 285 billion euros ($353 billion) in troubled loans four years after a deep recession that had pushed that figure up to 360 billion euros, curbing lending to businesses and raising fears of a big bank failure.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme has declared mortgage broker Blevins Franks Mortgage Services in default. Blevins Franks was a trading name of Mortgage Partner Services Limited of Regents Park Road, London. The firm has also traded as Blackstone Franks Mortgage Services Limited. The FSCS says the firm went into default in March and that consumers can get their money back as a result of dealing with a failed firm. Read more. (Subscription required.)

Vedanta Ltd said on Tuesday it got approval from India's designated court for bankruptcy cases to acquire Electrosteel Steels Ltd. Electrosteel is the first to get approval from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), among a dozen of the country's biggest loan defaulters which were pushed to bankruptcy proceedings last year, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. A Vedanta Ltd unit will buy debt-ridden Electrosteel for 18.05 billion rupees ($274.96 million) and provide additional funds worth 35.15 billion rupees, the company said in a statement.

Noble Group improved the terms of its controversial $3.4 billion debt restructuring deal and won the support of its biggest shareholder as the commodity trader seeks to complete the vital transaction, Reuters reported. Singapore-listed Noble’s debt-for-equity swap has already won the backing of more than 83 percent of the holders of its senior debt but it also needs a majority of its shareholders to approve the restructuring. “The revised structure granting shareholders 15 percent equity in New Noble has my full support,” Noble founder Richard Elman said in Noble’s statement on Monday.