Headlines

Italian banks proved the weakest link on Monday, as an election result that saw the country’s anti-establishment parties make significant gains prompted investors to sell a sector that has outperformed the wider European market over the past year, the Financial Times reported. The FTSE Italia All-Share Banks Index dropped 2.6 per cent on Monday with Banco Intesa Sanpaolo down 1.4 per cent and UniCredit falling more than 3 per cent. Investors focused on a sector that has historically acted as a barometer for the market’s view on the wider Italian economy.

Billionaire T. Ananda Krishnan’s Aircel Ltd. has asked an Indian court to initiate bankruptcy proceedings as it’s unable to repay about 500 billion rupees ($7.7 billion) of dues, Bloomberg News reported. The mobile carrier owes about 150 billion rupees to secured financial creditors and the rest to operational unsecured creditors, including those who provided it goods and services, Janak Dwarkadas, a lawyer representing Aircel, told the Mumbai bench of National Company Law Tribunal on Monday. In addition, the company also has an unpaid interest amount totaling 5.79 billion rupees, he said.

Mexican construction company ICA said on Monday that a judge had approved its creditors agreement, ending the group’s bankruptcy proceedings, Reuters reported. ICA suspended debt payments at the end of 2015 after a crash in the peso made its dollar-denominated debt load unbearable. The company entered into bankruptcy proceedings in September last year. Read more.

South Korea’s finance minister said on Monday that General Motors Korea’ creditors and its labor union should share the burden of improving the loss-making operation, Reuters reported. “The unions and creditors should together share the burden, and (restructuring measures) should not be temporary but sustainable,” Kim Dong-yeon told reporters. GM Korea announced last month it would shut down a factory in Gunsan, southwest of Seoul, and that it was mulling the fate of its three remaining plants in South Korea.

National Bank of Kenya Ltd., which has the biggest bad-loan book in the Kenyan banking industry, is considering closing some of its 85 branches to cut costs, Chief Executive Officer Wilfred Musau said, Bloomberg News reported. Lenders in East Africa’s biggest economy are being forced to lower expenses after a government-imposed cap on commercial lending rates impaired their ability to provide loans and as consumers embrace digital banking, including Safaricom Ltd.’s M-Pesa platform.

Federal police in India on Thursday told a court an internal auditor at a Mumbai branch of Punjab National Bank conspired with other officials to carry out a $2 billion fraud at the country’s second-biggest state lender. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday arrested auditor Mohinder Kumar Sharma, widening its probe into the biggest bank fraud in India’s history, Reuters reported. On Thursday it accused Sharma of conspiracy in a filing to a Mumbai court, which committed him to police custody until March 13.

Murat Ulker, Turkey’s richest man and owner of Godiva chocolates and McVitie’s biscuits, said he met with five bank bosses to renegotiate as much as $7 billion of debt for his company Yildiz Holding AS, Bloomberg News reported. “We spoke about many details,” Ulker said, adding that he was “moved” and “pleased” at the support he received from the bank bosses. The meeting was held on Tuesday evening in Istanbul. Ulker and the bank chiefs discussed how they were committed to resolving the debt issue, but didn’t go into details of any restructuring or new facility, according to the Yildiz boss.

It was supposed to be the crowning achievement of Malaysian tycoon T. Ananda Krishnan’s five-decade career. But his $7 billion bet on mobile carrier Aircel Ltd. may instead go down as one of the biggest-ever flops by a foreign investor in India, a stark reminder that doing business in the world’s fastest-growing major economy is often a lot tougher than it looks, Bloomberg News reported.

A Manchester-based peer-to-peer lender has gone into administration after trading without a licence, putting £21m of investors’ money at risk, the Financial Times reported. Collateral (UK), a small P2P company offering pawnbroker-style and property-backed loans with 15 per cent returns, went into administration on Wednesday after it emerged that it was not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority.

AirAsia Bhd is selling its plane leasing operations to firms managed by BBAM Ltd, one of the world's largest aircraft portfolio managers, in a staggered deal that will see the budget carrier transfer ownership of up to 182 Airbus jets. The transaction, valued at $1.2 billion (873.43 million pounds) in the first phase, will help Asia's biggest budget airline cut debt and return money to shareholders, as well as give it firepower to grow its business, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.