Headlines

Gulf General Investment Company (GGICO) is in talks with lenders to restructure loan and credit facilities after defaulting on a payment linked to 2.15 billion dirhams ($585.5 million) of debt at the end of last year, the Sharjah-based firm said on Sunday. The company, which has investments spanning financial services, property, hospitality, manufacturing and retailing, previously restructured its debt in September 2017 and before that in July 2012, Reuters reported. It said in December 2017 it defaulted on a principal payment of 24.4 million dirhams related to the restructured debt.

Retail billionaire Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct International Plc is among bidders for certain Toys “R” Us Inc. stores in the U.K., according to a person familiar with the matter. The group has submitted an offer for some properties backing a 2013 securitization known as Debussy DTC, said the person, who isn’t authorized to talk about it and asked not to be identified, Bloomberg News reported. Private equity firm TPG is also competing for some assets backing the Debussy debt, while Hayfin Capital Management LLP plans to submit a bid or provide financing to potential buyers, said the person.

The former Angolan president’s son and a former central banker are suspected of using accounts at HSBC Holdings PLC and Standard Chartered PLC in an attempt to defraud the country’s central bank by transferring $500 million through these U.K.-based lenders, people familiar with the matter said. The prosecutor’s office in Angola said the money was transferred from Angola’s central bank, allegedly to guarantee a $30 billion financing deal, according to a statement posted on the government website Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Wu Xiaohui, the former chairman of China’s giant insurer Anbang, has expressed remorse and sought leniency at the end of his trial for alleged fraud of $10.4 billion (€8.45 billion) in Shanghai, the Irish Times reported. Mr Wu is one of the country’s best-known dealmakers, a politically connected investor whose aggressive drive to buy overseas assets has come to embody the hubris of China’s heavily indebted conglomerates.

The Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) has proposed a new standard covering the regulation of sharia-compliant capital market products, posing a challenge for regulators, issuers and intermediaries working on Islamic bonds, or sukuk, Reuters reported. The exposure draft from the IFSB, one of the main standard-setting bodies in Islamic finance, represents the most detailed effort to rein in claims of sharia non-compliance and clarify resolution of disputes in sukuk deals.

Conviviality, owner of the Bargain Booze and Wine Rack chains, plans to appoint administrators after it warned on profits, discovered a forgotten tax bill and failed to raise emergency funds, the Financial Times reported. The retailer and wholesaler to pub operations, whose chief executive Diana Hunter stepped down abruptly on March 19, said “the board has resolved to file notice of intention to appoint administrators to the company”. Within the past few weeks, the group has warned on profits twice because of what it said was margin erosion in its wholesale business.

Embattled tiremaker Kumho Tire Co. will likely face liquidation if it is placed under court receivership, the top financial regulator warned Thursday. A state-run creditor bank has warned that Kumho Tire will have to submit to court protection unless the tiremaker's labor union agrees on the planned sale of a majority stake in Kumho Tire to China's Qingdao Doublestar Co. by Friday, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

Less than a month after it was seized by the Chinese government, Anbang Insurance Group, the giant conglomerate, is once again offering small investors “you snooze, you lose” investment opportunities — your money back, guaranteed. Sold like stocks or bonds in bank branches around China, the products carry names like Anbang Abundant Stability No. 10, suggesting the investments are conservative. They are anything but, the International New York Times reported.

The Argentine government rebuffed an investor proposal that it should request a flexible credit line from the International Monetary Fund to shore up the nation’s finances, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg News reported. The proposal was discussed with Finance Minister Luis Caputo and his team the week of March 4 at private meetings on the sidelines of a larger gathering of about 50 investors in New York, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the talks were private.

Default rates for bonds issued by emerging market companies have been lower than those of their developed world counterparts since 2004, according to analysis by Moody’s. The research confounds the popular perception that emerging economies are inherently less credit worthy than advanced countries and therefore should pay higher yields on debt to compensate investors for a greater default risk, the Financial Times reported.