Headlines

A unit of HNA Group Co. sought more time to complete the arrangement of a second bridge loan it took to finance a luxury real-estate development in Hong Kong as the Chinese conglomerate juggles its borrowings following a debt-fueled acquisition spree, Bloomberg News reported. Hong Kong International Investment Group Co. needs “extra time” and the loan has been extended for six months through July 15, it said in an emailed statement on Monday.

The oil price has hit $70 a barrel, its highest level in more than three years, but that’s not proving much help for a country which generates 95 per cent of its foreign earnings from petrodollars. Angola, sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest economy, began 2018 by scrapping the peg its currency, the kwanza, has with the dollar and warning of a potential renegotiation of its $40bn in external debt, the Financial Times reported.

UK decision-makers think Brexit will have a more negative impact on their business over the next two years, Economia reported. Sentiment fell from 105 to 98 in the last quarter of 2017, meaning businesses are becoming more pessimistic, according to a survey conducted by YouGov. It used data provided by mid-tier firm RSM’s Brexit Monitor, based on 310 interviews with middle market firms that had turnovers between £30m and £300m.

Shares in debt-laden British building and services company Carillion Plc sank 15 percent on Thursday in the absence of news on a deal needed to shore up its finances, Reuters reported. Many observers have warned that the 200-year old company, responsible for some of Britain’s highest profile infrastructure projects, risks collapse if it does not reach a deal with lenders to restructure its finances. The company, which employs 43,000 people, said on Saturday that it would meet creditors on Wednesday and that it could recapitalise or restructure its balance sheet in other ways.

Airline Niki filed for insolvency in Austria on Thursday, in a move to safeguard an agreed sale of the Austrian arm of failed Air Berlin to British Airways owner IAG, its insolvency administrator said. Niki filed for insolvency in Berlin last month after Germany’s Lufthansa scrapped plans to buy the carrier, but a Berlin regional court said earlier this week that Niki was not under German jurisdiction, Reuters reported. The ruling, which Niki has appealed, has put a question mark over the deal with IAG.

Top officials at the European Central Bank may revise the outlook for their massive monetary stimulus program early this year, according to an account of their last meeting, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. The report published Thursday showed the officials remained wary at their Dec. 14 meeting of prematurely signaling an expected exit from the bond-buying program, which is credited with accelerating an economic recovery in the 19 countries that use the euro currency.

Standard & Poor’s downgraded Brazil’s credit rating deeper into junk territory on Thursday, citing the government’s failure to pass key fiscal reforms, the Financial Times reported. The move by the rating agency is a slap in the face for the administration of President Michel Temer, which has been touting Brazil’s progress in recovering from its worst recession on record. The stock market has also been hitting new records.

Protests over losses at loosely regulated credit institutions, which have hit millions of Iranians, smoldered through 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported. The resentment exploded…and provided the spark that set off the most sustained unrest in Iran in almost a decade. The complaints over financial fraud quickly morphed into a wider protest over an economy that hasn’t performed to expectations, especially following a landmark nuclear deal in 2015 that eased Western sanctions but didn’t do much to improve living standards.

That 2017 suffered from more than its fair share of natural catastrophes was known at the time. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, the streets of Houston, Texas, were submerged under brown floodwater; Hurricane Irma razed buildings to the ground on some Caribbean islands. That the destruction was great enough for insurance losses to reach record levels has only just been confirmed. According to figures released on January 4th by Munich Re, a reinsurer, global, inflation-adjusted insured catastrophe losses reached an all-time high of $135bn in 2017, The Economist reported.

Shares in Monte dei Paschi di Siena rose more than 5 per cent after the boutique fund Quaestio bought a chunk of bad loans from the bank for around €800m. Milan-based Quaestio said it had bought around 95 per cent of a tranche of €25bn non-performing loans from Monte Paschi, the Financial Times reported. The Tuscan bank is 68 per cent owned by the Italian Treasury, after a government-backed rescue last year.