Headlines

Venezuelan bonds tumbled after the government claimed a surprise victory in regional elections and the opposition cried fraud. The perceived foul play increases the risk of further sanctions against the oil producer. The extra yield investors demand to hold Venezuelan debt over U.S. Treasuries widened 116 basis points to 32.32 percentage points, the highest in the world, Bloomberg News reported. A dollar bond issued by state-run oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA that matures in two weeks fell 1.6 cent to 92.3 cents on the dollar.

The shine has come off India’s growth. Most countries would crave a growth rate as high as 5.7 per cent, but this is a setback for a country that recently boasted of growth rates higher than China’s. The slowdown exposes underlying fragilities that no triumphalist talk could conceal. What lessons the government takes from this, and how it responds, will determine the contours of the economy and its growth prospects for a long time, the Financial Times reported. The call for reforms has not gone unheeded by the government of Narendra Modi.

British infrastructure projects seeking funds from the European Investment Bank will need to insure the bank against the risks of Brexit, its president said at the weekend, as he warned that Britain’s departure from the EU would damage its ability to fund infrastructure, the Financial Times reported.

A group of bondholders that are Oi SA’s largest creditors demanded on Sunday that the company’s top executives meet them as soon as possible to renegotiate a debt plan, Reuters reported. In a letter viewed by Reuters that was addressed to top Oi executives and board members, Oi’s two biggest bondholder groups demanded the carrier’s executives meet in New York to “negotiate in good faith and on an expedited basis the terms of an acceptable plan(s) of reorganization.” The letter was sent by the main advisors of the International Bondholders Committee the Ad Hoc Group of Oi Bondholders.

Italy on Friday extended a bridge loan for airline Alitalia, which is in special administration as state commissioners seek to sell, overhaul or liquidate the carrier, Reuters reported. Italy’s cabinet said in a statement it had passed an emergency decree to add a further 300 million euros ($354.36 million) to the loan of 600 million euros it made to the ailing company in May. It also extended the deadline for the repayment of the loan, which was due in November this year, to Sept. 30, 2018.

Sears Canada on Friday won court approval to begin liquidating all its remaining assets starting Oct. 19, putting the retail chain with 12,000 employees on a path to closure after 65 years in the country. The approval was granted by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, which also extended creditor protection for Sears Canada to Jan. 22, Reuters reported. The public liquidation sales are set to end on Jan. 21.

With just months left before Greece’s latest lifeline expires, all bets are off on whether it’ll need more support. Officials directly involved in the country’s bailout say they don’t have the stomach for another strings-attached aid program when the current one expires in August 2018, Bloomberg News reported. Worn out after seven years of endless cliffhanger negotiations, both Athens and its European creditors are keen to turn the page. That said, Greece needs to show it can go it alone while Euro-area creditors have to be sure they can recover their money.

Russia and Venezuela may sign an agreement on restructuring Venezuelan debt by the end of the year if terms drafted by their finance ministries are approved, said Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. “In general, we worked out with the finance ministry such conditions,” Siluanov told reporters in Washington, where he attended the International Monetary Fund fall meeting, Bloomberg News reported.

Sagging economic growth in India is complicating efforts to clean up a mountain of bad debt at the nation’s banks, Bloomberg News reported. Loans worth 1.7 trillion rupees ($26 billion) have been withdrawn in total since the 2001 inception of the Corporate Debt Restructuring Mechanism through to the end of August, according to the latest data from the agency that brokers agreements between borrowers and lenders. That’s a net increase of 446 billion rupees from the end of 2016, and already exceeds the 415 billion rupees of loans that couldn’t be revamped last year, the data show.

Budget carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle is interested in slots made available by the collapse of British holiday airline Monarch, its chief executive told Reuters, but said the process is unclear. Monarch collapsed earlier this month, stranding thousands of people, and sparking speculation about what will happen to the take-off and landing slots it occupied at airports such as London Gatwick and Luton, Reuters reported. “We could very well use the slots, but it’s not that easy to actually transfer slots,” Norwegian Air CEO Bjorn Kjos told Reuters on the sidelines of the CAPA Global Summit.