Headlines

Dubai-listed conglomerate Gulf General Investment Co(GGICO) said on Monday it expected to complete a restructuring of around Dhs2.36bn ($643m) in loans by next month. The firm, which has investments spanning financial services, property, hospitality, manufacturing and retailing, previously renegotiated Dhs2.8bn in financial commitments in 2012. But the subdued local economy prompted the company to revisit that debt restructuring last year.

One year ago, Brazil’s Vice President Michel Temer — a veteran political operative — took the country’s helm after Dilma Rousseff's impeachment, promising to rein in public spending and return the economy to expansion. While he has taken steps to control the government’s outlays, growth remains elusive, Bloomberg News reported. Investors are pretty happy with his tenure, but Brazilians are somewhat less so, with opinion polls showing his approval rating hovering around the 10 percent mark. Still, no one’s complaining about the drop in inflation.

Greece inched closer to a return to public market finance for at least part of its Sisyphean debt burden this week, with benchmark bond yields dropping to levels seen when the country last issued new debt three years ago, the Financial Times reported. Enthusiasm for the small portion of Greek debt held in private hands and available to trade followed a long-delayed agreement on fiscal and structural reform measures with European creditors this month, paving the way towards debt relief talks.

International Bank of Azerbaijan, the energy exporting country's biggest lender, said on Friday it needed to restructure more than $3 billion of its debt, most owed to foreign creditors, to tackle bad loans left over from the slump in oil prices, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The state-controlled bank announced on Thursday it was suspending payments on some liabilities and seeking creditors' support for restructuring. The news sent IBA's dollar-denominated bond tumbling to its lowest level in over a year.

Indian conglomerate Piramal Enterprises said it is looking to expand its real estate development business and also expects to have a licence to start providing home mortgages by July. The Mumbai-based group, whose interests range from pharmaceuticals to financial services and real estate financing in India's big cities, said it now plans to finance top property developments in second-tier cities, Reuters reported.

The Co-operative Bank is poised to reveal in the coming days that it is a step closer to bolstering its balance sheet to meet the Bank of England’s capital requirements ahead of a looming deadline, the Financial Times reported. The lossmaking bank is preparing to announce that it is in advanced talks with existing hedge fund investors about injecting more capital, after stating in January that it will fall short of the regulatory threshold during the next few years.

The yield on Chinese five-year government bonds hit its highest since 2014 on Friday, as tight liquidity and a regulatory crackdown on leveraged investment caused a rarely seen inversion of the yield curve, the Financial Times reported.

The largest bank in Azerbaijan has halted its foreign debt payments and will start restructuring negotiations with creditors after a currency crisis in the Caspian Sea nation drove the lender to the brink of collapse, Bloomberg News reported. The International Bank of Azerbaijan missed a principal and interest payment on a $100 million subordinated loan on May 10, according to an emailed statement from the government-owned lender on Thursday.

Moody’s downgrade of Canada’s biggest banks beat down assets in a market already rattled by woes of mortgage lender Home Capital Group Inc, Bloomberg News reported. Yet analysts say this isn’t evidence of an impending crisis. “The weatherman just warned us about a storm that already came and went,” said Derek Holt, head of capital markets economics at Scotiabank.

There's growing evidence that China is finally scaling back its epic borrowing binge. That's important for a lot of reasons, not least for reducing risk and avoiding a financial crisis, a Bloomberg View reported. The question is whether the government can sustain the pain. Regulators in Beijing are well aware of the risks that excessive leverage poses, and have tried many times over the years to crack down. Yet they routinely fail to rein in local government officials who get promoted by boosting economic growth, regardless of what systemic risks they may be incurring by binging on debt.