Headlines

The head of India’s Tata conglomerate has promised to offload weaker companies among its 110 operating businesses, in an effort to tackle widespread underperformance within the sprawling group, the Financial Times reported. In a Financial Times interview one year on from his arrival as chairman of holding company Tata Sons, Natarajan Chandrasekaran said that he was determined to build a clearer structure within a group whose operations range from table salt to armoured vehicles and artificial intelligence. “There are a lot of marginal businesses we are in,” Mr Chandrasekaran said.

Congo Republic is set to become the latest African country to start debt relief talks with trading houses after borrowing $2 billion (1.43 billion pounds) from merchants such as Trafigura and Glencore but now finding its debt levels unsustainable, sources familiar with the matter said. Trading houses regularly lend money to resource-rich clients in financial distress - be it countries such as Congo, Chad, Morocco or Iraq's Kurdistan region - when other lenders walk away.

A massive annual loss estimate by commodities trader Noble Group makes it more likely that creditors will back its $3.4 billion (2.4 billion pounds) debt-for-equity restructuring to ensure the company's survival, analysts said. Noble, which flagged an annual loss of up to $5 billion on Monday, announced an initial deal with creditors last month to halve its senior debt and give them 70 percent of the company, with existing equity holders diluted to 10 percent, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Britain’s pensions regulator twice ignored requests from trustees of collapsed outsourcing firm Carillion to force the company to plug its pension deficit, lawmakers said on Tuesday. The Pensions Regulator has come under fire for taking insufficient steps to protect pension scheme members of troubled companies, following the collapse of department store chain BHS in 2016, Reuters reported. Carillion collapsed on Jan. 15, with only 29 million pounds ($41 million) of cash left.

Saudi Arabia’s cabinet has approved a bankruptcy law, sources familiar with the matter said on Sunday, giving a boost to efforts to make the kingdom more enticing to investors, Reuters reported. Modern bankruptcy legislation does not currently exist in Saudi Arabia, creating difficulties for struggling companies seeking to restructure debt with creditors since the 2009 global financial crisis and, more recently, the dip in oil prices.

Seadrill’s main owner, billionaire John Fredriksen, is close to reaching a final agreement with banks, bondholders and South Korean shipyards on a financial restructuring plan, the drilling rig company said in a court filing. The Oslo and New York-listed firm, once the world’s largest offshore driller by market value, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last September after a sharp drop in oil prices cut demand for rigs, Reuters reported.

It’s been a bad start to the year for Zambia, Bloomberg News reported. Its Eurobonds are the worst-performing debt among emerging-market sovereign issuers, having lost 5.8 percent, according to Bloomberg indexes. On Monday, the kwacha weakened 1 percent against the dollar, the most globally, to its lowest level in almost six weeks. Doubts over whether the government will secure a $1.3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund have resurfaced among investors.

Noble Group Ltd., the commodity trader battling to survive, warned that it’ll report another vast loss including from the operations meant to sustain a revamped business, and while it signaled progress in debt-restructuring talks, hurdles to a deal remain, Bloomberg News reported. The Hong Kong-based company will report a net loss of $1.73 billion to $1.93 billion for the final quarter of last year, potentially bringing losses for 2017 to almost $5 billion, it said in a statement early on Monday. That meant it had a negative net-asset position of $650 million to $850 million at Dec. 31.

Greece’s finance minister has said his country will not need to be subject to tight monitoring once its bailout programme ends in August, insisting the concerns of EU partners are misplaced as it can be trusted to manage its finances safely, the Financial Times reported. Euclid Tsakalotos says that Greece’s new economic growth plan, to be unveiled in April, will assuage fears in Brussels and Washington that the leftwing Syriza government will roll back unpopular economic reforms as soon as bailout constraints are lifted.

Seadrill’s main owner, billionaire John Fredriksen, is close to a deal with unsecured bondholders and South Korean shipyards on a restructuring plan for the rig operator, sources familiar with the talks said on Thursday. The Norwegian company, which last year filed for bankruptcy protection in a U.S. court, has been working with creditors since last month on a restructuring plan to bring in more than $1 billion in fresh funding, allow it to maintain its fleet of rigs and pay creditors and staff, Reuters reported. “The deal hasn’t been signed yet, but I‘m very hopeful...