Headlines

The value of announced mergers and acquisitions (M&A) worldwide fell 27 percent year-on-year to $753 billion in the third quarter of 2016, as apprehension among corporate executives about overpaying prevented a repeat of last year's deal-making frenzy, Reuters reported today. While M&A activity remains robust, dealmakers said companies are being more selective in their decisions to do deals.

Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd. bondholders won control of the oil producer after a London judge approved a debt-restructuring agreement, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The decision gives creditors 85.5 percent of the company, according to a court ruling yesterday. The agreement won near-unanimous support from bondholders last week. Gulf Keystone, which operates in the Kurdish region of Iraq, missed bond payments in April as it struggled with the collapse in crude prices to below $50 a barrel.

Research by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP showed that U.K. company pension deficits fell by 20 billion pounds ($26 billion) in September but remained close to the previous month’s record high of 710 billion pounds, Bloomberg News reported today. The funding gap for defined-benefit pensions, which pay retirees fixed amounts based on factors including length of service, stood at 690 billion pounds as of September 29, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

Mexican Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said he’s confident that increases in the key interest rate and the decline in the nation’s currency will have no more than a marginal effect on the nation’s debt level and fiscal balance, Bloomberg News reported today. Meade, who replaced Luis Videgaray three weeks ago, predicted Mexico will maintain its credit rating, on negative outlook at S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service, given its plan to have a primary surplus of 0.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2017.

Telefonica SA’s efforts to reduce its debt pile suffered a new blow after the Spanish carrier was forced to scrap the initial public offering of its infrastructure unit, Telxius Telecom SA, as demand from investors proved inadequate, Bloomberg News reported today. Telefonica will continue “to analyze strategic alternatives” for Telxius, the Spanish carrier said yesterday. The decision to call off the sale was reached together with the banks that were managing the IPO, the company said.

China is struggling with a string of rust-belt corruption cases that reflect the government’s troubles delivering on one of its signature policies: reducing the bloat in major industries that are dragging down the economy, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In the latest case, made public by official media this week, prosecutors accused a midlevel official of siphoning at least $6.3 million in government funds meant to help laid-off workers.

Germany will not help ailing lenders such as Deutsche Bank, senior lawmakers in Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative bloc said today, as resistance grew to any possibility of staging a rescue, Reuters reported. Concerns over the stability of Germany's largest bank pushed its U.S-listed shares down by more than 8 percent in New York on Thursday after they touched a record low in Europe this week. Seeking to reassure investors, Deutsche said that its trading clients remained largely supportive. The immediate cause of Deutsche's crisis is a fine of up to $14 billion from the U.S.

A new petition is urging the British government to ban cold-calling about pensions and investments in a bid to protect people from fraudsters, the Telegraph reported today. Financial advisers – backed by former pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann – have started a petition calling for it to be illegal to call or email someone unbidden to discuss their pension or investment opportunities. Fraudsters often lure in savers with offers of a “free pension review” before encouraging them to invest in high risk, unregulated investments or transfer their pension to suspicious schemes.

PDG Realty SA said that it continues to discuss options with its financial advisers, denying a newspaper report that it would soon file for bankruptcy protection, the Brazilian homebuilder said in a securities filing, Reuters reported yesterday. PDG said that it is still weighing alternatives to strengthen its capital structure and restructure its finances, the company said in the filing.

Sainty Marine Corp., a shipbuilder based in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, plans to convert its capital into about 520 million new shares and swap some or all of them with debt as part of a revamp, Bloomberg News reported today. Creditors will get one equity share for about 13.72 yuan ($2.1) of Sainty’s debt under the restructuring, the company said in a draft plan to the Shenzhen stock exchange. Sainty Marine had more than 800 million yuan ($120 million) of loans overdue when trading in its shares was halted about a year ago.