Headlines

Chad is seeking to delay repayment of more than $1 billion of Glencore Plc-led oil-for-cash loans after crude prices plunged, the second time the African country has looked to restructure the debt in two years, according to people familiar with the matter. Glencore has approached the banks that supported the deal to start talks, while Chad has already appointed financial and legal advisers for the discussions, the people said, asking not to be named because the matter is private, Bloomberg News reported.

The state-backed rescue of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA may be approved by the European Commission as soon as today, completing a six-month review of the restructuring of the world’s oldest bank, according to people familiar with the matter. EU approval would pave the way for a precautionary recapitalization of the lender, making it the third Italian bank to obtain state aid this year, Bloomberg News reported.

A decade has passed since the start of the financial crisis, but when it comes to handling struggling banks, the European Union still hasn’t moved on. Italy’s taxpayer-funded wind-down of Banca Popolare di Vicenza SpA and Veneto Banca SpA highlighted the patchwork of EU and national laws and guidelines that govern the funneling of public money to banks, despite years of work on a common rule book intended to end the era of big bailouts, Bloomberg News reported.

Global regulators have claimed victory in the drive to tame the toxic parts of the “shadow banking” market that made a devastating contribution to the global financial crisis a decade ago, the Financial Times reported.

The Bank for International Settlements is the stopped clock of international economic institutions. It has argued for monetary and fiscal tightening, whether that makes sense, or not. Fortunately, policymakers, or at least the central banks that are members of the BIS, have ignored its apparent conviction that the world needed an even deeper and more prolonged recession Yet now, precisely because central banks wisely ignored its advice, a synchronised recovery has finally arrived, the Financial Times reported in a commentary.

India's market regulator on Friday set tougher rules for the country's ratings agencies, including mandating them to more closely monitor whether issuers are meeting their debt obligations and increasing disclosure requirements, Reuters reported. Regulators and market participants argue the agencies were slow to adjust ratings of some companies that defaulted. Each of the big three global agencies - Standard & Poor's, Fitch Ratings and Moody's Investors Service - are majority owners of firms in India which operate independently of their parent companies with different rating standards.

Bad debts at Indian lenders, especially state-run banks, have climbed to a 15-year high and may increase further, a central bank study showed, Bloomberg News reported. Under the baseline scenario in a “macro stress test,” the industry’s gross bad-loan ratio may increase to 10.2 percent by March 2018 after climbing to 9.6 percent in March 2017, the highest since 2002, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s Financial Stability Report released Friday. Stressed assets, including soured debt and restructured loans, eased slightly to 12 percent in March 2017 from 12.3 percent in September 2016.

The head of the three Mozambican state-owned companies at the center of an audit into their previously undisclosed debts was defiant after the probe criticized his leadership, Bloomberg News reported. Antonio do Rosario, in a letter seen by Bloomberg that he authenticated, said Kroll LLC auditors personally attacked him in the report that was published on June 24.

How rich is the irony that a lender should withdraw its support from Fairpoint, the debt management business. Last week, Fairpoint’s bank, AIB, said the UK junior market company needed to find alternative funding, the Financial Times reported. That stopped the group signing off its 2016 accounts and forced it to suspend its shares at 10p, valuing the company at £4.8m or a quarter of borrowings. Fairpoint is the Lancashire company set up in 1997 to help people drowning in debt to deal with their banks.

Shareholders in National Bank of Greece have confirmed the sale of 75 per cent of the group’s wholly-owned insurance subsidiary to Calamos-Exin, a US-Dutch consortium, for €718m. National Insurance, the largest Greek insurer, was offered for sale under a restructuring plan agreed with the EU and International Monetary Fund as part of the country’s current €86bn bailout, the Financial Times reported. NBG, the country’s second-largest lender, undertook to dispose of non-core assets and focus on domestic banking in line with benchmarks set by creditors.