Headlines

The cost of insuring Deutsche Bank AG’s subordinated debt rose to a record amid growing concerns about the lender’s financial health, Bloomberg News reported today. Credit-default swaps on the German lender’s junior bonds jumped as much as 37 basis points to 536 basis points, the highest level in CMA prices going back to 2007. The lender’s 1.75 billion euros ($2 billion) of 6 percent additional Tier 1 bonds, the first to take losses in a crisis, fell about 2 cents on the euro to a more than seven-month low of 71 cents, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Allianz is in talks with interested parties about the partial or total sale of regional private bank Oldenburgische Landesbank AG (OLB), which is 90 percent owned by the German insurer, Reuters reported today. U.S. private equity group Apollo and Germany's Commerzbank had submitted non-binding offers for the bank, which has assets of 13 billion euros ($14.6 billion), according to the report.

Venezuela’s state-owned oil company offered an improved deal to bondholders as it seeks to push back debt payments coming due this year and next, Bloomberg News reported today. Petroleos de Venezuela SA said that it will pay investors as much as 1.22 times the face value of the notes they hold in exchange for longer-maturity securities, after offering no price premium in a proposal Sept. 16. While the original swap offer was for $7.1 billion of bonds, PDVSA said yesterday that it wouldn’t swap more than $5.325 billion of securities.

The Saudi Ministry of Commerce and Investment has published a new bankruptcy draft law and invited feedback those interested, with their opinions and suggestions before the deadline of October 27, Al Arabiya reported today. The Ministry of Commerce said that the bankruptcy law will enable stalled projects to be completed taking into consideration the financial constraints and to carry forward the business or to liquidate them if need be, while at the same time guaranteeing the rights of creditors and other stakeholders.

Saudi Arabia’s central bank stepped up efforts to support lenders in the Arab world’s biggest economy as they grapple with the effects of low oil prices, Bloomberg News reported.

The International Monetary Fund has piled pressure on eurozone governments to take bolder action to alleviate Greece’s debt burden, saying that current plans do not go nearly far enough to address the country’s chronic problems, the Financial Times reported. The fund’s warning shot comes as it weighs whether or not to take part in the latest bailout of Greece — a key decision for some EU nations, such as Germany, that see IMF participation as vital to the credibility of Greek rescue programme.

Failed South Korean container carrier Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd (117930.KS) told a U.S. judge on Friday that cargo owners were withholding up to $80 million in payments for completed shipments, complicating the company's ability to move stranded freight. "Hanjin is not the only bad guy here," Ilana Volkov, an attorney for the shipping company, said at a status hearing at a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Newark, New Jersey. Hanjin lawyers said that many cargo owners had received their goods on credit but have yet to pay the shipping company.

Argentina’s shrinking economy and high unemployment are triggering ever-louder grumbling from its citizens, posing problems for President Mauricio Macri in a country where economic discontent has undone previous leaders, The Wall Street Journal reported. The difficulty for Mr. Macri is that he promised it wouldn’t be like this. When he took office in December vowing to slash inflation and jump-start the economy, he told Argentines they could look forward to a brighter future in the second half of this year.

While economists and many foreign investors fret about China’s spiralling debt and rising defaults, a small niche of alternative asset managers is braving the China credit space, attracted by high yields from borrowers shut out from other sources of finance, the Financial Times reported. Global banks have pulled back on cross-border lending to China, but some private debt funds are moving in to plug gaps in a domestic financial system still dominated by state-owned banks.

An unexpected revival in France’s economy may have helped the eurozone avoid a further slowdown in the three months to September, according to surveys of purchasing managers at manufacturers and service providers in the currency area, The Wall Street Journal reported. However, with Germany slowing, there are few signs of the acceleration in the anemic pace of recovery that would be needed for the European Central Bank to meet its inflation target over coming years, although the surveys also found that businesses raised their prices for the first time in over 12 months.