Headlines

Oi SA, Brazil's largest fixed-line telephone carrier, plans to start meetings with bondholders and banks next week as part of the country's biggest-ever bankruptcy protection process, Chief Executive Marco Schroeder said on Thursday, Reuters reported. To restructure its 64.5 billion reais ($20 billion) of bonds, bank debt and other liabilities, Oi will propose a mix of cuts in the nominal debt value, extension of maturities and conversion of debt to equity, he said in a phone interview. Schroeder did not elaborate on the terms to be proposed.

Some $1.3tn in Chinese corporate loans — equivalent to the size of the entire Australian economy — is “at risk” of turning bad, according to the International Monetary Fund. But you would never guess that anything was even slightly amiss in corporate China if you were to consult the country’s homegrown credit rating agencies, the Financial Times reported. Everything is just fine, say the top-10 Chinese credit rating agencies.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said the central bank would probably need to pump more stimulus into Britain's economy over the summer after the shock of last week's decision by voters to leave the European Union, Reuters reported. Carney also said he would not consider resigning from the Bank if his critics from the referendum's Leave campaign, who were angered by his warnings of a Brexit hit to Britain's economy, end up filling a power vacuum in the government.

Within hours of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, it started, the International New York Times reported. A Lithuanian lawmaker wrote to the chief executive of HSBC, trying to court the bank. A website promoting Frankfurt as an attractive location to invest went live. A Berlin start-up published an online how-to guide for anyone looking to move to the German capital.

Nigeria's Niger state plans to seek bondholders' approval next month to restructure its 21 billion naira ($74 mln) worth of debt, its adviser said on Thursday, as it seeks ways to ease strains caused by a plunge in crucial oil revenues. Niger, which lies in northwestern Nigeria and is home to around 4 million people, plans to meet bondholders on July 28 to approve an extension to its five-year debt due in 2018 to 2023 and an increase of its coupon from 14 percent to 16 percent.

India’s central bank has warned that bad loan ratios will continue to rise this year, raising pressure on the government to expand its planned recapitalisation of the banking sector, the Financial Times reported. India’s state-owned banks, which account for nearly three-quarters of banking assets, have been hit hard by a wave of defaults on loans made in recent years to sectors such as infrastructure and steel.

Brazil’s unemployment rate increased between March and May, while wages continued to decline, as Latin America’s largest economy faces a deep and prolonged recession, the Financial Times reported. Joblessness rose to 11.2% from 10.2% in the previous three-month period and 8.1% compared with a year earlier, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, or IBGE, said Wednesday. Average monthly wages fell to 1,982 Brazilian reais ($582), adjusted for inflation, from 2,037 reais in the year-earlier period. The drop in jobs and wages comes as the country’s recession lingers.

The latest figures show that Alberta's insolvency rate has climbed dramatically since a year ago compared to the national rate, CBC News reported. The total number of insolvencies — bankruptcies and consumer proposals — filed by individuals increased 52.8 per cent from April 2015 to April 2016 in Alberta, according to the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada. Across the country, the number of insolvencies was up 4.9 per cent over the same period.

Damian Kimmelman is exactly the kind of entrepreneur the U.K. government says it needs. His London startup has 100 employees and expects to hire many more, Bloomberg News reported. Unfortunately for the British economy, Kimmelman’s new people won’t be in the U.K.: He changed his plans after voters chose to leave the European Union last week. “We’ll be distributing our team, opening up new offices in Europe rather than focusing on the U.K.,” said Kimmelman, whose company, DueDil, provides data-analytics tools to study private companies.

Emerging market companies are suffering from sharper falls in productivity and profit margins than those in advanced economies, underlining the malaise gripping the developing world, the Financial Times reported. Across emerging markets, productivity, defined as output per worker, fell 1 per cent in the 12 months to the end of the first quarter of 2016. This is the sharpest slide since the tail-end of the global financial crisis in 2009, according to analysis by JPMorgan.