Headlines

The Hotel Dei Dogi, a lagoon-side palazzo in Venice, will be renovated in the autumn for the first time in 20 years after a U.S. investment firm snapped up the debts of its family owners, confident of selling it and eight sister hotels at a profit. In the hinterland a couple of hours' drive to the west, hotel Le Seriole, modest with a small pool and closed, is being auctioned for a fifth time this month; four previous attempts drew no bids - driving the price down by 79 percent.

China is likely to extend an agreement providing crisis-stricken Venezuela with favourable loans repayment terms but will not lend fresh funds to President Nicolas Maduro's government, according to sources in Caracas and Beijing familiar with the situation. During a decade, China plowed more than $50 billion into the OPEC member's coffers through oil-for-loan agreements that helped Beijing secure energy supplies for its fast-growing economy while bolstering an anti-Washington ally in Latin America, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Retailer Carpetright has agreed a loan with a shareholder in exchange for new shares to fund the short term running of the company, and may raise another 60 million pounds to try to turn its business around, it said on Wednesday. Shares in the company, which sells floor coverings, were up almost 6 percent at 43 pence at 0819 GMT.

Ghana’s central bank has appointed accounting firm KPMG as administrator for Unibank to save it from imminent collapse, Governor Ernest Addison said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The move, which follows central bank liquidations of two other local banks last year, will prevent losses to depositors and other creditors and ensure it does not create further risks to the wider financial system, Addison told reporters. Ghanaian-owned Unibank had suffered persistent cash shortfalls and regularly fell below cash reserve requirements, he said.

The cost of Noble Group Ltd.’s restructuring is likely to top $100 million, another financial burden for the cash-strapped commodities trader that has defaulted on its bonds, Bloomberg News reported. The estimated price tag for advisers and other expenses, based on disclosures in regulatory filings, is approaching the company’s entire market value of $114 million as Noble pays fees to the company’s creditors and foots much of the bill for the 11 law firms, investment banks and public relations consultants working on the restructuring.

Mozambique is set to meet foreign creditors to discuss almost $2 billion of debt in London Tuesday in what will mark the start of formal restructuring negotiations, more than a year after the southern African nation defaulted, Bloomberg News reported. Investors including Credit Suisse Group AG and UBS Group AG have little idea what will be discussed. Mozambique first missed coupon payments on its $727 million Eurobond due 2023 in January last year and has had almost no contact with the holders since then.

South Korean shipbuilders aren’t out of the woods yet even as orders begin recovering, with the smaller ones facing collapse in the absence of government support, according to a shipping-debt trader, Bloomberg News reported. The government will aid larger shipyards through ways such as giving them orders for the next few years, under its support policy for the shipping and shipbuilding industries, said Soo Cheon Lee, co-founder and chief investment officer of SC Lowy, a Hong Kong-based loan and bond trading firm.

Ryanair has agreed to buy a majority stake in the airline founded by Niki Lauda — two months after the former Formula One champion scuppered an attempt by British Airways’ owner IAG to snap it up, the Financial Times reported. The Irish carrier will acquire 75 per cent of Austria’s LaudaMotion subject to EU competition approval, it said on Tuesday. It will take a 24.9 per cent stake until the all-clear is received. British Airways’ parent, IAG, had originally emerged as the successful bidder for the airline when it was sold under the insolvency of previous owner Air Berlin.

A key gauge of financial professionals’ view of the German economy tumbled this month in the latest sign that the spectre of a ‘trade war’ is hitting confidence in the eurozone’s biggest economy, the Financial Times reported. The Centre for European Economic Research (Zew) economic sentiment index dropped 12.7 points in March from February to 5.1 points. The reading was far below the consensus estimate in a Reuters poll of 13. This month’s reading pulled the Zew indicator further away from the long-term average of 23.6 points.

Extensive changes are in the offing at South Africa’s troubled state-owned companies as new Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan moves to tackle their many management and financial failings, Bloomberg News reported. Power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. and several other state entities have been caught up in graft and management scandals over recent years and repeatedly called on the state to bail them out as their debt ballooned to unsustainable levels.