Headlines

A battle for control of one of India’s largest industrial assets is moving into the courtroom after bids for Essar Steel from both ArcelorMittal and a Russian-controlled investment vehicle were declared ineligible under India’s tough new bankruptcy code, the Financial Times reported. Essar Steel was forced into insolvency proceedings last August after falling behind on debt repayments.

South Africa's new president Cyril Ramaphosa will need to call on all his dealmaking skills to overhaul ailing state-owned firms and tackle land reform if he wants to capitalize on Moody's decision not to downgrade the country's debt to junk, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Moody's said its decision to keep South Africa's rating at investment grade reflected its view the country's institutions would regain strength under more transparent and predictable policies - though the new government had to stay on track.

Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's former finance minister who transfixed Europe with his unconventional style at the climax of the debt crisis, launched a new party on Monday promising to free his country from debt bondage, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The academic economist - who once described the austerity imposed by Greece's creditors as "fiscal waterboarding" - said his new MeRA25 party would revive the economy through debt restructuring and other measures.

PSA Group no longer needs its 25 percent stake in its former logistics division Gefco, the maker of Peugeot and Citroen cars said on Monday after French newspaper Les Echos reported that the holding had been put up for sale, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. PSA "observes that Gefco's operating performance and diversified client portfolio mean that its capital stake is no longer necessary," a spokesman for the carmaker said. "No transaction has been identified at this stage," he added.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is coming under pressure from a growing faction of ECB officials to start raising interest rates in the middle of 2019, opening up the prospect of a tug of war within the world’s number two central bank ahead of Mr. Draghi’s departure later next year, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Tata Steel has offered to pay a little more than 350 billion rupees ($5.4 billion) to lenders of Bhushan Steel & Power to take over the bankrupt steelmaker, a source with direct knowledge of the deal said. Bhushan Steel’s panel of creditors approved the deal on Thursday, pending other regulatory clearances, the company said in a stock exchange filing on Friday without disclosing financial details, Reuters reported.

Venezuela needs urgent debt relief and would look to give bondholders small payments in the short-term while pushing back maturities in order to allow the country to return to growth, according to the economic adviser of opposition candidate Henri Falcon, Bloomberg News reported. “Venezuela’s debt is in default and needs to be restructured in the nation’s best interests to get relief in the short term,” Francisco Rodriguez said in an interview on Thursday.

Richard Elman, the 77-year-old founder and largest shareholder of Noble Group Ltd., quit due to "differences of opinion" with the firm’s board and creditors over its future, in a fresh blow to the trading house’s attempts to push through a massive debt restructuring, Bloomberg News reported. The statement Friday came less than two hours after a regulatory filing showed that Elman this week trimmed his stake in Noble from 18.07 percent to 17.94 percent.

India’s largest cement maker, UltraTech Cement Ltd., aims to aggressively cut its debt over the next two years to help prepare for more acquisitions, Bloomberg News reported. UltraTech, controlled by billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla, plans to prepay some loans through its internal cash accruals, according to Chief Financial Officer Atul Daga. It targets to cut the ratio of its net debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to 1 time by 2020, from 2.3 times currently, Daga said in an interview Thursday in Mumbai.

A 60-year-old engineering company that was subcontracted by Carillion to work on a school near Liverpool is expected to become the first casualty in the collapsed contractor’s supply chain, the Financial Times reported. About 160 staff at Vaughan Engineering’s three offices in Edinburgh, Warrington and Newcastle are expected to lose their jobs as the company prepares to file for administration. The family-owned business is owed £650,000 for works completed for Carillion. It had also been contracted to complete a further £1.1m of work in the first three months of this year.