Headlines

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has appointed an interim insolvency professional for SmartCity (Kochi) Infrastructure, after admitting a payment default claim by a creditor against the joint venture between the Kerala government and Dubai's Tecom Investments. The Kerala government holds a 16% stake in the IT special economic zone, with Dubai Holding's Tecom unit owning the rest. The first phase commenced operations last year and the project is expected to become fully operational by 2020. Kochi Smart City, Kerala's signature IT project, is coming up on 246 acres of land.

Air Berlin has spoken with more than 10 parties interested in parts of the insolvent carrier and expects its assets will be divided up amongst two or three buyers, its chief executive told a German paper, Reuters reported. Talks began on Friday on carving up Air Berlin, which said on Tuesday it was filing for insolvency. German flag carrier Lufthansa was first in the queue for meetings, ahead of other potential bidders.

The Brazilian unit of struggling Spanish energy and infrastructure group Abengoa SA obtained approval from creditors on Friday for its in-court debt restructuring plan, said a lawyer representing one of the creditors, Reuters reported. Abengoa has around 3.4 billion reais ($1.08 billion) in debt with suppliers and banks in Brazil and has filed for court protection against creditors last year, after stopping several projects for lack of funding.

Almost a year after China rolled out steps to rein in soaring corporate leverage, concerns are rising that undeserving companies are benefiting while households are getting saddled with risks, Bloomberg News reported. China unveiled guidelines for debt-to-equity swaps in October, part of measures to trim the world’s biggest corporate debt loads. The idea was that healthy firms would use the program to cut interest-bearing borrowings, while bloated companies would be shunned.

China's moves to crack down on illicit banking activities have achieved initial targets and 20 sets of new regulations to increase supervision will be issued this year, the chief of the banking regulator's Prudential Regulation Bureau said on Friday, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The new regulations will cover policy banks, online lending, interest rate risks and asset management firms, Xiao Yuanqi told a briefing.

A Russian lender that provided banking services to a subsidiary of State-controlled Irish Bank Resolution Corporation has been shut down by regulators there due to its “highly-risky credit policy”, the Irish Times reported. Until earlier this week, the website of the IBRC’s Moscow subsidiary, LLC Solids, listed Sovereign Bank as its “partner bank” in Russia. However, in April 2016 the bank had its licence revoked by the Russian Central Bank due to “the real threat to the interests of creditors and depositors”.

Qatar is telling its banks to tap international investors to raise financing, instead of mainly relying on government funding, as the impact of the ongoing Saudi-led boycott puts pressure on liquidity, the Irish Times reported. The central bank is holding regular meetings with lenders to gauge how the standoff is affecting liquidity, and is encouraging banks to borrow internationally through bonds and loans to avoid further depletion of foreign reserves and credit-rating downgrades, said sources who asked not to be identified because the matter was private.

A first round of formal talks for the sale of insolvent German airline Air Berlin's assets will be held with its bigger local rival Lufthansa on Friday, ahead of other prospective bidders, a senior labour union official said. "Only Lufthansa will initially be part of the talks ... As far as I know, the other bidders will be invited for talks afterward and then an overall package will be put together," said Lufthansa's deputy chair Christine Behle, who represents labour union Verdi on the company's supervisory board.

Solarworld, a former stock market darling that became one of the biggest casualties of Germany’s ill-fated solar boom, has been resurrected from insolvency with the help of investors from Qatar, the Financial Times reported. The company has agreed to sell its key assets — including its two manufacturing plants in Germany — for about €100m to a Qatari-German joint venture set up by Frank Asbeck, the founder of Solarworld, and Qatar Solar Technologies. The new company, Solarworld Industries, was formally unveiled in Berlin on Thursday.

The euro fell to its lowest level of the month on Thursday after European Central Bank policymakers showed concern that its further rise could derail the region’s recovery, a view that could make the bank tread more carefully when starting to pare back its crisis-era support, the Financial Times reported. The single currency, which had hit a two-and-a-half year high against the dollar, fell to a low of $1.1661 in afternoon trading after the concerns were revealed in the minutes of the ECB’s latest interest rate-setting meeting. It rose back to about $1.173 later in the day.