Headlines

China Development Bank (CDB), the biggest foreign lender to India's Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom), on Friday withdrew a petition seeking to drag the indebted telecoms carrier into insolvency, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. A lawyer for CDB told the National Company Law Tribunal that the Chinese bank had filed to withdraw the petition. The tribunal allowed CDB's plea to go forward.

A firm holding the riskiest debt in Anglo Irish Bank has given up a long-fought battle to recover some of the £300 million (€337 million) owed by the defunct lender, the Irish Times reported. Lambay Capital Securities, a Dublin-based special purpose vehicle, was used in 2005 to raise money for Anglo Irish Bank from international investors by way of the sale of preference shares, a hybrid between debt and equity.

Ireland accounts for just 0.4 per cent of the global economy. But outside interest massively outweighs that tiny world GDP share – given the ubiquity of the Irish people and the country’s enormous cultural reach, the Irish Times reported. Ask most Brits or Americans how the Irish economy is faring and, while they may not know specifics, they’ll have a general sense. The roar of the Celtic Tiger was heard around the world, as was the sound of Ireland’s 2008 crash – being more severe than in any other English-speaking country.

A Berlin court on Thursday rebuffed a legal challenge to the insolvency filing of airline Niki, which could derail the sale of the Air Berlin unit to Britain’s IAG, and referred the case to a higher court for a ruling, Reuters reported. Niki filed for insolvency in Berlin last month after Germany’s Lufthansa scrapped plans to buy the Austrian unit, grounding the airline’s fleet and stranding thousands of passengers.

The Canadian government is increasingly reluctant to insure mortgages against default, Bloomberg News reported. That may end up giving new life to a nascent bond market in the nation. For decades, most home loans made in Canada were made by the biggest banks and guaranteed by the government’s housing agency. In late 2016, regulators tightened the requirements for qualifying for that insurance, resulting in more people doing without it: about three-quarters of the mortgages made by federally regulated banks last year didn’t have government backing.

Greece may be able to exit the bailout programme established by international authorities as soon as this year, HSBC has said, in a sign of just how far the eurozone has come since the depths of the debt crisis in 2011, the Financial Times reported. The country last year regained access to capital markets, its economy is looking less dreary, and it will have enough cash reserves in August of this year to finance itself for the next “year or so”, said Fabio Balboni, European economist at HSBC.

Insolvency professionals are flummoxed by the latest rule from the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India that prohibits them from outsourcing the work related to resolution of a bankrupt company, The Economic Times reported. "All the assignments in which delegation of authority has taken place by the insolvency professional even if it is with the approval from the Committee of Creditors, the same has to be given a hard relook after this circular," said Mamta Binani, former president of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India, and an insolvency professional herself.

Bonds from China’s property developers face the biggest risk of default in the nation’s domestic debt market as the government’s funding curbs strain their finances, according to a survey of analysts and traders, Bloomberg News reported. Ten out of 15 respondents in a Bloomberg survey late December see some payment failures among developers this year. Most predict yield spreads on corporate bonds that surged to four-year highs in 2017 to climb more.

Tata Steel, Vedanta, Edelweiss ARC, and Renaissance Steel India are likely to have submitted resolution plans for Electrosteel Steels, one of the 12 companies mandated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for insolvency, Business Standard reported. The last date for submitting resolution plans was Thursday. A Tata Steel spokesperson said: “As a process, we do assess and evaluate various strategic opportunities for growth. This is an ongoing process in the company.” An e-mail sent to Vedanta went unanswered while Edelweiss did not comment.

A German court is likely to decide on Thursday whether to reverse the insolvency filing of airline Niki, according to a statement from Berlin’s civil courts, which could derail the sale of the Air Berlin unit to Britain’s IAG, Reuters reported. Niki filed for insolvency last month after Germany’s Lufthansa scrapped plans to buy the Austrian unit, grounding the airline’s fleet and stranding thousands of passengers.