Headlines

Italy's budget deficit amounted to 2.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2017 and the public debt stood at 131.8 percent, national statistics bureau ISTAT reported on Wednesday, revising up its previous estimates. On March 1, ISTAT had reported a deficit-to-GDP ratio of 1.9 percent and a debt-GDP ratio of 131.5 percent, both down from the previous year when the deficit stood at 2.5 percent and the debt at 132.0 percent, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

The top executives of bailed-out Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena told investors in London on Wednesday the bank is making progress with its turnaround plan, two fund managers who attended the meetings said, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. CEO Marco Morelli and CFO Andrea Rovellini said in one-to-one investor meetings they were confident about hitting targets agreed with EU authorities to clear the rescue, one fund manager said.

Nearly a third of the companies have defaulted on the loans they have taken from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). These loans were extended on “easy terms” towards developing new technologies, and to encourage start-ups, The Hindu reported. They were awarded as part of an ongoing scheme since 2001, according to a response by Union Minister for Science and Technology Harsh Vardhan to a question in the Lok Sabha.

Brazilian authorities said on Tuesday they had filed lawsuits against 17 people and two companies over losses suffered when the Petrobras employee pension funds and the Caixa Economica Federal invested in a special fund without due diligence, Reuters reported. The lawsuit is seeking 219 million reais ($65.55 million) in compensation, which authorities said is three times the losses caused by the poor investments. Petros did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. Caixa Economica’s pension fund Funcef declined to comment.

The consortium formed to build and operate the world’s biggest airport in Istanbul was facing enough challenges even before the government minister in charge of the project started talking about insolvency, Bloomberg News reported. In a television interview late Monday, Transport Minister Ahmet Arslan confirmed the government was considering giving the consortium an unspecified amount of time before requiring it to start paying rent, which has been set at more than $1 billion annually over 25 years. But then he went a step further.

Investors in local-currency Chinese corporate bonds need to be on alert this year, with record maturities and a government crackdown on debt increasing the risk of more defaults, Bloomberg News reported. There were six defaults on bonds in the first quarter, the most since the April-June period of last year, and investors and analysts are predicting more as interest rates rise and China clamps down on excessive borrowing. The tighter financing environment is hitting smaller private-sector firms hardest, as they haven’t benefited from capacity cuts.

Billionaire Lakshmi Mittal’s ArcelorMittal will on Wednesday challenge in court the legitimacy of a bid for Essar Steel India Ltd. by a group led by VTB Capital, intensifying the battle for the biggest industry asset yet to be sold under a new bankruptcy law, Bloomberg News reported. Mittal’s steelmaker has several reasons to question the eligibility of the VTB-led Numetal Ltd. group, including that Aurora Enterprises was part of the consortium at the time of an initial round of bidding, Brian Aranha, an executive president at ArcelorMittal, said in an interview in Mumbai.

Chinese conglomerate Anbang Insurance Group, whose former chairman and top shareholder faced trial for fraud last week, will receive a Rmb61bn ($9.7bn) capital injection from an insurance-industry rescue fund, as a transitional arrangement until the company can find new long-term investors, the Financial Times reported. The equity injection by the China Insurance Security Fund (CISF) is "based on the needs of risk disposal work for temporary, partial shareholding" of Anbang, the insurer said in a statement on Wednesday morning.

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India has tightened the entry barriers for insolvency professionals by bringing in a new set of austere amendments with effect from April 1 which will ensure that only seasoned professionals are allowed to function, The Economic Times reported. With these measures, a bunch of 76 home-grown insolvency professional entities (IPEs), a kind of boutique firm, are now staring at a better prospect over their peers.

Three bidders, including two new players, have submitted resolution plans after lenders called for fresh bids in Essar Steel Ltd.’s insolvency process, Bloomberg News reported. These include a joint venture between ArcelorMittal India and Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp, Nu Metal & Steel Pvt. Ltd, in which JSW Steel is an investor, and the Vedanta Group, according to two people in the know who spoke to BloombergQuint on the condition of anonymity. Of the three, ArcelorMittal-Suitomo JV had participated in the earlier bidding as well.