Headlines

Bidders for insolvent airline Niki have until Thursday to submit their offers for the Austrian unit of collapsed Air Berlin, its administrator said on Monday, Reuters reported. “None of the possible buyers have presented a binding, fully financed offer, but there are indications of interest,” Lucas Floether told German news agency DPA. “We have set a deadline for binding offers for midday on Thursday,” he said, while declining to provide details on the bidders.

It’s only fitting that Oi SA, after filing for the biggest bankruptcy protection in Brazil’s history, is bringing its bitter 18-month restructuring battle to a crescendo with an epic creditors’ meeting at a rock concert venue, Bloomberg News reported. The venue for Tuesday’s gathering of about 4,000 people is RioCentro, the Rio de Janeiro events and convention center near where Rock in Rio was held last September.

Pier Carlo Padoan, Italy’s finance minister, warned against efforts to tighten eurozone banking rules as he fended off criticism that the centre-left government had mishandled the country’s financial difficulties, the Financial Times reported. Speaking at a testy parliamentary hearing on Monday, Mr Padoan said Italy had benefited from “flexibility” in the EU banking regime that had allowed Rome to plough billions of euros into the rescue of its ailing banks, including Monte dei Paschi di Siena as well as two regional banks in Veneto.

One of the world's most famous hat makers, Borsalino, whose stylish fedoras and straw panamas are popular with movie stars and celebrities, faces liquidation after a rescue plan was rejected by an Italian court on Monday, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. A judge in the northern town of Alessandria, where the luxury hat maker was founded 160 years ago, refused a request for court protection from creditors, who are owed some 18 million euros ($21 million), a local trade union leader told Reuters. "It's dramatic if a solution is not found.

Jittery businessmen in Catalonia, spooked by signs the recent tumult over the region's latest bid to secede from Spain is hurting the local economy, have put their investment plans on ice as they brace for the Catalan parliamentary election on Thursday, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. Catalan retail sales and tourist arrivals are falling and unemployment is edging higher, recent figures show.

Ryanair may bid for assets of Niki, Europe’s biggest budget carrier said on Friday, as administrators scramble to find a buyer for the insolvent Austrian airline before it loses its valuable runway slots, Reuters reported. Niki, a unit of Air Berlin, filed for insolvency on Wednesday after Germany’s Lufthansa scrapped plans to buy its business, grounding the airline’s fleet and stranding thousands of passengers. “Ryanair confirmed today ...

Global A&T Electronics, a Singapore-based chip assembler that took on hefty debt a decade ago through a buyout by TPG Capital and Affinity Equity Partners, filed for bankruptcy as a 2013 debt exchange came back to haunt it, Bloomberg News reported. The chip-assembler listed debt of more than $1 billion and assets of over $500 million in Chapter 11 papers filed Sunday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government will do its utmost to blunt the impact of job cuts at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. as the debt-saddled company carries out its restructuring plan, Bloomberg News reported. Netanyahu and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon will meet this week with Teva Chief Executive Officer Kare Schultz to try to “minimize the blow to workers,” according to an e-mailed statement from the prime minister’s office.

Ever since the financial crisis, the European Union has grappled with how to solve the so-called sovereign bank doom loop -- the phenomenon whereby weak banks can destabilize governments that support them and over-indebted governments can push banks holding their bonds over the precipice. The widely touted solution is the European Banking Union, which the European Commission wants completed by 2018, a Bloomberg View reported.

A deal between Noble Group, the troubled commodity trader, and its creditors could involve a debt-for equity swap that would further dilute existing shareholders, its chairman has warned. Speaking at a shareholder meeting to approve the sale of its oil business to Vitol Group, Noble’s Paul Brough said there would be “more pain” ahead as it tries to restructure its debts to stave off the threat of insolvency, the Financial Times reported. “As we go forward, I think there will be more pain, but there is hope as well,” Mr Brough was reported as saying by Bloomberg.