Headlines

China's Jiangsu Shagang Co Ltd said on Monday it is expected to be the biggest shareholder of debt-strapped Dongbei Special Steel Group after a bankruptcy restructuring process, Reuters reported. Owned by the Liaoning provincial government in the country's "rustbelt" northeast, Dongbei entered into the bankruptcy restructuring process in October aimed at recovering a reported $10 billion in debt, and said it faces "uncertainties" about paying interest on medium-term notes in April.

Bankia and CaixaBank sold a combined €1.75bn of subordinated debt less than a month after similar securities were torched at Banco Popular, in a clear sign of the market's maturity, Reuters reported on an International Financing Review story. State-owned Bankia achieved the lowest ever coupon for a Spanish public Additional Tier 1 bond sale, the riskiest debt that banks can issue, beating national champions Santander and BBVA. The €750m no-grow perpetual non-call five-year (rated B+ by S&P), its inaugural AT1, priced at 6%.

You'd think that steering a country away from the brink of economic catastrophe might buy a young administration some slack, but not in Argentina, where tolerance for anything short of miracle-making runs thin, a Bloomberg View reported. So maybe it's no surprise that less than two years after taking office and announcing a 21st-century Marshall Plan, President Mauricio Macri is struggling not just to fix South America's second-largest market, but to salvage his career as well.

Bank failures in Italy and the drawn-out rescue of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA revealed the frayed edges in Europe’s patchwork of rules for dealing with firms in crisis, and fixes are needed to make the system work as intended, according to Elke Koenig, who makes the call on saving or shuttering major euro-area lenders, Bloomberg News reported. “Let’s try to look at the cases we had and see how to align the rules better,” Koenig, who heads the Single Resolution Board in Brussels, said in an interview.

Cosco Shipping Holdings Co. offered $6.3 billion to acquire the container carrier controlled by former Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa’s family in a deal that would catapult the mainland Chinese group into world’s third-largest shipping line, Bloomberg News reported. State-owned Cosco will pay shareholders of Orient Overseas International Ltd., Hong Kong’s No. 1 box mover, HK$78.67 a share in cash, a 31 percent premium over the stock’s last closing price.

France’s top central banker has pleaded with Germany to loosen its fiscal policy as part of a deal with his country to strengthen the eurozone, the Financial Times reported. François Villeroy de Galhau, governor of Banque de France, said Paris must press on with its own reforms as part of an accommodation with Berlin, with the two countries seizing the opportunity provided by synchronised election cycles and an economic recovery.

It’s been a long time coming but Greece finally has its latest tranche of eurozone bailout cash, ensuring Athens will not be defaulting on its creditors later this month, the Financial Times reported. The European Stability Mechanism, the eurozone’s bailout fund, today approved a €8.5bn cash injection after the country successfully completed its second review as part of an €86bn rescue agreed in 2015.

Noble Group, the Hong-Kong based commodity trader, has asked lenders to waive a debt covenant tied to a $1.1bn credit line that matures next year while it continues work on a plan to recapitalise the business, the Financial Times reported. Noble wants the banks to set aside the condition on the borrowing facility given the risk that a measure of net debt to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation could rise above an agreed limit this year, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

India's Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board on Thursday called for public comment on the country's revised bankruptcy code that went into effect last year, signaling that it plans to tweak the law, which the government hopes will resolve India's $150 billion stressed-loans problem, Reuters reported. The board said the window for receiving comments will be open till Dec 31. Modifications to the regulations would be made by March 31 and take effect from April 1, 2018.

Bhushan Steel Ltd reported a March-quarter loss that was much bigger than stated earlier in its unaudited results, as the debt-laden steelmaker was hurt by higher costs, Reuters reported. Audited net loss for the quarter was 11.31 billion rupees ($174.7 million), compared with the unaudited 7.57 billion rupees loss reported in May, Bhushan Steel said late on Wednesday. However, the fourth-quarter loss narrowed marginally from the 11.85 billion rupees loss it reported a year earlier. Total expenses rose more than 18 percent to 59.94 billion rupees for the quarter.