Headlines

Saudi Arabia has dodged a financial crisis due to low oil prices by slashing state spending and borrowing tens of billions of dollars abroad, but now it faces a tougher challenge: getting the economy growing again, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. In a series of interviews with Reuters reporters last week, senior Saudi officials said reforms announced on national television by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a year ago had stabilised state finances enough for the government to begin focusing on investing in the economy.

With just three days to go before the final round of French elections, a sense of calm pervades markets as Emmanuel Macron looks set to prevail over rival Marine Le Pen, Bloomberg News reported. Risk gauges show investors are mostly ruling out the possibility of a presidential win by anti-euro candidate Le Pen after they pared hedging following her centrist opponent’s thumping victory in the preliminary ballot. Opinion polls consistently indicate a 20 percentage point advantage for Macron, and a snap survey by polling firm Elabe adjudged him the winner in a television debate on Wednesday.

Portuguese bond yields fell to a five-month low last week amid a broader European relief rally after Emmanuel Macron’s first-round victory in voting for France’s next president. Philip Brown, head of sovereign debt origination at Citi, points out that Portuguese government bonds have been the only eurozone sovereign market to show positive returns in the year so far, returning 3.9 per cent.

Dana Gas PJSC will ask bondholders to accept changed terms on $700 million of debt coming due in October as the energy producer based in the United Arab Emirates seeks to restructure debt for the second time in five years, Bloomberg News reported. Holders of the Islamic bonds, or sukuk, should form a committee to represent them in the planned discussions, Sharjah, U.A.E.-based Dana Gas said Wednesday in a statement to the Abu Dhabi stock exchange.

Massive anti-government protests in Venezuela that have left about 30 people dead couldn’t stem the biggest rally in two years for the country’s bonds, Bloomberg News reported. Despite food and medicine shortages, the government has reiterated its willingness to stay current on debt, and state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA made good on a $2.2 billion bond payment last month. The implied probability of the country missing a payment in the next 12 months fell to 50 percent from 56 percent at the end of March, according to credit-default swaps data compiled by Bloomberg.

Alitalia will be put up for sale starting in two weeks with the aim of finding a buyer for the entire airline to stave off liquidation, a senior Italian official said. A day after Alitalia collapsed into administration, Carlo Calenda, the economic development minister, set some goals for talks around the airline’s future, the Financial Times reported. “Within 15 days the commissioners will be open to expressions of interest,” Mr Calenda said in a radio interview on Tuesday.

The eurozone’s economy has showed more signs that it has escaped its post-crisis doldrums, as figures published on Wednesday indicated that growth in Europe’s single currency area accelerated at a faster pace than in either the UK or the US in the first quarter, the Financial Times reported. An early estimate of gross domestic product suggested the eurozone recovery remains on track, with the region’s economy matching its solid performance at the end of last year in the opening three months of 2017.

A deal for a Chinese state-owned company to help bail Malaysia out of a multibillion-dollar financial scandal fell apart Wednesday after the Chinese government refused to authorize the investment, The Wall Street Journal reported. China Railway Engineering Corp. and a local Malaysian partner had agreed in December 2015 to take a 60% stake in Bandar Malaysia, a major residential and commercial real-estate project in Kuala Lumpur that originally was being developed by 1Malaysia Development Bhd., a Malaysian state fund.

In a year filled with European elections, no one wants another debt crisis—even if this requires pretending that Greek politicians will implement pro-growth reforms they’ve repeatedly shunned, The Wall Street Journal reported in a commentary. That’s the meaning of this week’s tentative agreement between Greece’s creditors and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government. Though the details aren’t public, Athens has agreed to make certain reforms in exchange for an approximately €7 billion disbursement from a 2015 bailout package so Greece can meet July debt repayments.

When the Italian airline Alitalia went bankrupt in 2008, the government swooped in with taxpayer money and Pope Benedict — a regular rider — offered the carrier a blessing. Six years later, as Alitalia stumbled into debt yet again, the government engineered another rescue, the International New York Times reported.