Headlines

Three former Tesco executives have been charged with fraud in connection with an accounting scandal that rocked the British supermarket giant two years ago, investigators said on Friday, the International New York Times reported. The charges stem from a criminal investigation dating to October 2014, after the company announced that it had overstated its first-half profit by 263 million pounds, about $420 million at the time, and that it had suspended several executives for accounting irregularities.

Weeks after being rebuffed, Ghana has tapped the international bond market again in what will be an important test of a rally in emerging market debt fanned by investors’ scramble to escape the low-yield world of developed markets, the Financial Times reported. West Africa’s second-biggest economy will sell $750m at 9.25 per cent, according to a banker familiar with the sale, before US Federal Reserve officials meet on September 21, when there is a chance, albeit receding, that they will raise interest rates.

The reorganization plan presented by Brazilian phone carrier Oi SA to a bankruptcy court this week was rejected by a group of bondholders on Thursday, who accused the company of putting the interests of shareholders first, Reuters reported. The steering committee for Oi's biggest organized group of bondholders, which holds 40 percent of Oi bonds by face value, said the company's proposal includes a debt reduction of 22 billion reais ($6.9 billion), which they called "unacceptable." The committee said it is working with other creditors to submit an alternative debt restructuring proposal.

The Saudi Arabian government has ended talks aimed at saving construction giant Saudi Oger, which is now facing the prospect of a multi-billion-dollar debt restructuring to stave off collapse, according to sources aware of the matter. Oger, owned by the family of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, was one of two mega-contractors charged with implementing the grand infrastructure and development plans of the kingdom, building everything from defense installations to schools and hospitals.

Almost a year after a deadly dam spill at the Samarco mine, owned by BHP Billiton and Vale, there is still no date for restarting operations, complicating attempts to restructure Samarco's debt and increasing the possibility the miner may be allowed to run out of money. Vale and BHP have assured authorities they will cover the cost of Brazil's worst ever environmental disaster, sources familiar with their thinking say, stopping short of saying they will keep Samarco, for whom the closed mine is the only real revenue stream, afloat. Samarco's debt is trading at distressed levels.

The European Central Bank left its €1.7 trillion ($1.9 trillion) stimulus unchanged at a policy meeting Thursday, brushing off concerns over economic shock waves from Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and disappointing investors expecting the ECB to act again soon, The Wall Street Journal reported. The decision to stand pat, even as new forecasts showed the ECB missing its inflation target for years, underlines how central banks are approaching the limits of what they can achieve without support from other policy areas, notably governments.

AIB chief executive Bernard Byrne has said the bank has been “fixed” and is ready for a stock market initial public offering (IPO) whenever the Government decides to press the button, the Irish Times reported. In a speech delivered to the Leinster Society of Chartered Accountants, Mr Byrne said: “The role of the board and the executive for the last five or six years was to fix the bank. This is largely done. It’s now realistic for the State . . . to look at getting all of its capital back over a time period.

A South Korean court presiding over the rehabilitation process of Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd has asked the firm's lead creditor for fresh funds, warning the troubled container shipper needs financial support this week to normalize operations, Reuters reported. The court did not say how much it had requested from lead creditor Korea Development Bank and government ministries.

Debt and equity investors in Canada's largest newspaper publisher have approved a restructuring plan that will give creditors nearly all of its equity and slash its debt obligations, Postmedia Network Canada Corp said on Wednesday. Postmedia, which owns the National Post, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen and Sun tabloids in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Winnipeg, said that 99.9 percent of shareholder votes cast were in favor while two separate tiers of debtholders cast 100 percent of their votes in favor.

Creditors of Oi SA, the Brazilian phone company that filed for bankruptcy with $20 billion of debt, view the restructuring plan the company presented late Monday as unfairly benefiting shareholders, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg News reported. The main issue is the right Oi has to redeem bondholders’ convertibles anytime it wants, the people said, asking not to be named because the position isn’t public yet.