Headlines

Urbancorp, one of Canada’s largest residential developers, has filed for a restructuring that includes selling off assets as the company seeks to dig itself out of debt, Bloomberg News reported. The company has filed for the restructuring under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and is seeking court approval to sell assets "to maximize real estate values for the benefit of creditors and other stakeholders," the Toronto-based firm said in statement Friday.

The Hilton hotel in Athens makes the perfect backdrop for high-intensity talks. Its ambience is subdued, its corridors hushed, its meeting rooms an oasis of tranquility, The Guardian reported. When Greece, in one of its many stand-offs with the international creditors keeping it afloat, finally won the right to conduct negotiations outside the confines of government offices, it seemed only natural that they should be held at the hotel. However, in recent weeks the talks have assumed an increasingly nervous edge.

The European Central Bank said it plans to start buying corporate bonds in June as it unveiled more details of its purchase programme.The bank will start acquiring corporate debt maturing between six months and 30 years, according to a statement. Purchases will include bonds issued by insurance companies, while excluding those sold by banks, ECB president Mario Draghi said in a press conference on Thursday.

Here's a growing list to further excite China bears this Thursday: Baoding Tianwei Group Co., China National Erzhong Group, Sinosteel Co., China Railway Materials Co. Ltd., Guangxi. These are the eight state-owned enterprises (SEOs) that have run into some sort of repayment problem this year, exacerbating already heightened concerns over the future of China's debt-fueled economy, Bloomberg News reported.

Brazilian construction company Grupo OAS said its creditors would take over its 24.5 percent stake in infrastructure company Invepar as part of a restructuring plan, Reuters reported. OAS's shares of Invepar will be transferred to SPE Credores by the end of the day on May 31, the company said in a statement on Thursday. Grupo OAS filed for bankruptcy protection in a São Paulo court last year to restructure 8 billion reais ($2.3 billion) in debt owed by nine units.

Creditors to the failed lender Anglo Irish Bank are set to receive their first payment within months after its liquidators built up about €2.1 billion of cash following the sale of most of its assets, according to sources. While the prospect of junior bondholders in the bank, who refused to share in its losses, being repaid the €285 million they’re owed has increased in the past year, they are unlikely to receive anything until at least 2018, the sources said. More senior creditors, led by the government itself, will be dealt with first.

In view of mounting bad loans eating into banks' profits, RBI has allowed them to exclude from provisioning stressed loans of certain companies in the fourth quarter numbers, The Economic Times reported. This will help ease burden on banks to some extent and support their bottomline. About two dozen companies which have been trying to repay loans by selling their assets or some of their subsidiaries have been excluded from defaulters list. "After reviewing accounts which were under asset quality review, RBI felt some of the accounts can be standardised.

Greece’s government aims to use better-than-expected budget data for 2015, due for release Thursday, to argue against extra austerity measures that its creditors want, as the likelihood of another summer drama over Greek debt increases, The Wall Street Journal reported. Senior Greek officials say that fiscal data from the EU’s statistics agency Eurostat will show that Greece had a primary budget surplus (before interest) of about 0.6% to 0.7% of gross domestic product in 2015.

Dubai-based property developer Limitless is set to complete a drawn-out debt restructuring after the final dissenting creditor sold its share of the company's 4.45 billion dirhams ($1.2 billion) debt, sources with knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. New York-based Stonehill Capital Management sold its debt in the state-controlled company, worth around $15 million at face value, to Dubai Islamic Bank, an existing creditor and one of the members of the creditor committee, the sources said.

In a victory for Moscow, a Dutch court on Wednesday overturned an order that Russia pay $50 billion to shareholders in defunct oil company Yukos, saying that the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration had no jurisdiction, the Irish Times reported. Former Yukos shareholders said they would appeal the surprise decision, which could impact earlier rulings in Belgium and France that four former shareholders were entitled to seize Russian state assets to compensate them for the loss of the oil giant.