Headlines

The world's largest independent aircraft leasing company, AerCap said on Tuesday there was "good solid demand" for the wide-body jets, after concerns surfaced in the U.S. about weak demand for the most widely traded types of jets, Reuters reported. American Airlines and Delta Air Lines have announced plans to defer deliveries of long-haul passenger planes, amid reports of a looming glut of capacity of such aircraft as planemakers bring out various new models while still upgrading old ones.

The yield on Greece’s most traded 10-year bond has hit its lowest since the country underwent a private sector bond restructuring nearly five years ago as investors bet Athens’ latest bailout breakthrough can finally pave the way for the start of its economic recovery, the Financial Times reported. Greece’s benchmark yield, a barometer for the markets’ take on the state of the country after nearly €350bn of bailouts, has slipped five basis points (0.05 percentage points) to a fresh low of 5.49 per cent today.

A tightening of leverage, coupled with soaring land costs, looks set to end the home price windfall that China's developers have enjoyed this year.Prices of new dwellings, excluding government-subsidized housing, gained in March in 62 of the 70 cities tracked by the government, compared with 56 in February, the National Bureau of Statistics said last month. On Monday, Longfor Properties Co.

Risk perception for most of the world's countries have improved in the past year, according to a Standard Chartered analysis of credit default swaps (CDS), contrasting with deterioration in France, Italy, the United States and Germany, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. CDS are derivatives used by investors to hedge against a default or restructuring of debt. The higher the risk of default, the higher the CDS spread.

France’s economic growth is expected to climb back to around its historical average following the election of its centrist president, accelerating from disappointing expansion at the start of the year, according to the country’s central bank, the Financial Times reported. Latest estimates from the Bank of France forecast a 0.5 per cent GDP expansion in three months to the end of June – the period encompassing the two round presidential vote which culminated in the election of Emmanuel Macron last weekend.

Investors in United Arab Emirates construction stocks can remember the good days -- when oil above $100 a barrel encouraged a seemingly endless stream of lucrative projects, Bloomberg News reported. Now, with crude priced at half that, companies are trying to rebuild their balance sheets. The downturn has translated into pain for investors in two of the largest construction companies in the U.A.E. Arabtec Holding Co. has slumped 90 percent from its May 2014 record, while Drake & Scull International P.J.S.C. is down 78 percent from its June 2014 peak.

India's move to strengthen the hand of its central bank will help it push reluctant lenders towards writedowns and errant borrowers into insolvency, bankers said, but the country is far from drawing a line under its $150 billion (£116 billion) of sour debts, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. India's bad loan problem is choking off new credit and dampening economic growth, and the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi knows it needs to act.

A group of Rickmers Holding AG’s bondholders have raised concerns regarding the German shipping firm’s restructuring, The Wall Street Journal reported. The criticism comes weeks after the Rickmers’s owner agreed to cede control of the shipping company to creditors to stave off an insolvency filing. The restructuring, if approved by creditors, would see HSH Nordbank AG, bondholders and possibly another bank take a 75.1% stake in exchange for debt forgiveness. Rickmers’s current owner, Bertram R.C. Rickmers, would be let with a 24.9% stake.

The European Central Bank will soon be able to adopt a more optimistic tone on the euro-area economy -- a possible first step in winding down stimulus -- according to Executive Board member Yves Mersch, Bloomberg News reported. “The recovery in the euro area is gaining more and more traction,” Mersch said in a speech in Tokyo on Monday.

When President Enrique Peña Nieto called Donald Trump and persuaded him not to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement on his 100th day in office, it was a reminder that Mexico has not lost its touch in managing international crises. Debt default, devaluation, hyperinflation and bank nationalisations — Mexico has coped with them all in the past four decades, the Financial Times reported. As Mr Trump was building his business empire, officials in Latin America’s second-biggest economy were cutting their teeth on catastrophe.