Headlines

State-controlled Petróleo Brasileiro SA unsuccesfully sought the appointment of arbiters to rework a long-term contract with debt-laden drilling rig leaser Sete Brasil Participações SA, according to three sources with knowledge of the situation, Reuters reported. The proposal, made in recent weeks, called on each party to name three mediators to rework the contract, said the sources, who requested anonymity since the plan is private. The contract between Petrobras and Sete Brasil has been in dispute for two years.

One of the biggest steelmakers in Britain, second in size only to Tata, has said there is no guarantee that the industry will survive if the government fails to step up its response to the current crisis, The Guardian reported. As the business secretary, Sajid Javid, prepared to travel to Mumbai for talks with the Indian multinational, the managing director of Celsa UK, Luis Sanz, asked why the British arm of his company was paying twice as much in electricity costs and eleven times as much in business rates than its operations in France and Spain.

Eurozone government borrowing costs fell to a five-week low on Monday, as investors increase bets that a massive new round of monetary stimulus by the European Central Bank will not be enough to revive inflation amid a slump in oil prices, the Financial Times reported. The yield on 10-year German Bunds, a proxy for the wider European bond market, rekindled its race towards zero, dropping to 0.12 per cent, the lowest level since late February.

Kenya's Uchumi Supermarkets Ltd is on the verge of insolvency as efforts to negotiate a cash injection hit a snag in the first quarter of 2016. Its debt to suppliers has skyrocketed to Ksh3.6 billion ($36 million), double the Ksh1.8 billion ($18 million) quoted last year, according to the management, AllAfrica.com reported. "Settling a significant part of this debt requires funds outside our normal operating activities. We are working on this through disposal of land and sourcing for an investor.

Germany believes it is realistic to expect the review of the bailout program between international creditors and Greece to be concluded by the end of April or early May, Germany’s finance ministry said Monday, reiterating that a Greek debt write-down currently isn’t an issue for Berlin, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Paris and Berlin are pressing industrialised nations to pull together a common blacklist of territories that breach transparency standards, in the toughest government responses yet to the Panama Papers affair, the Financial Times reported. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, and Michel Sapin, his French counterpart, also emphasised the need for sharing and publishing the names of the ultimate beneficiaries of all corporate structures, including shell companies, trusts and foundations that can offer anonymity to their users.

Greece called on the International Monetary Fund on Saturday to explain whether it was seeking to usher Athens toward bankruptcy ahead of a pivotal referendum in June on Britain’s membership in Europe. Greece’s comments came after I.M.F. officials raised questions in a private discussion published by WikiLeaks about what it would take to get Greece’s creditors to agree to debt relief, the International New York Times reported.

A top Saudi prince has announced new elements of a plan to reduce the kingdom’s heavy dependence on oil, amid a drop in world prices that has sent shock waves through the Saudi economy. The plans include publicly selling shares of the state oil giant, Saudi Aramco, and routing much of its worth into a public investment fund, said the prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in an interview with Bloomberg published Friday, the International New York Times reported. The fund could become the world’s largest, he said, with more than $2 trillion in assets.

Romanian state-owned power producer Hidroelectrica expects to finally exit its insolvency process by next month, and aims to sell a minority stake in an initial public offering by November, its manager told Reuters on Sunday. Romania's largest and cheapest power producer has been run by a court-appointed manager after it became insolvent for the second time in early 2014. It first became insolvent in 2012 after losing $1.4 billion over six years from contracts under which it sold the bulk of its output below market prices.

Small businesses whose bank loans were bundled into portfolios and sold to “vulture” funds have been advised to consider going into examinership to protect themselves should the funds call in their loans, the Irish Times reported. Hughes Blake accountants, which specialises in examinerships for small businesses, said seeking court protection from the funds could be a “valid tactical maneouvre”. It said many of the funds behave differently from each other so businesses should familiarise themselves with the approach of the fund that bought their loan.