Headlines

Romania's Ilfov Court has appointed a local consortium comprising insolvency management firms Infinexa Restructuring and Prime Insolv Practice as the judicial administrator of insolvent meat processor Angst Ro, Infinexa said on Thursday, SeeNews.com reported. Angst was declared insolvent in March at the request of its creditors, meat processor Abatorul Peris and food retailer Primo Mix Food.

Households face increased bills unless councils are given greater powers, the leader of Cotswold District Council has warned, BBC.com reported. Councillor Joe Harris added that many councils only have weeks between learning how much money they will receive before publishing their spending plans. “You wouldn’t run a business like that - we need long-term funding certainty so we can plan two or three years ahead,” Mr Harris added. The government has promised to “get councils back on their feet” by introducing multi-year funding settlements.

A legal change in the bonds that will emerge from a debt restructuring in the South Asian island of Sri Lanka could set a precedent for sovereign debt contracts, Bloomberg News reported. The country’s officials and its international bondholders have agreed to keep New York as the governing law of new notes to be issued under a $12.6 billion rework, but are introducing a mechanism that allows creditors to request a change to English or Delaware law, according to a government statement on Thursday.

The European Central Bank must think hard about how it deals with risks and uncertainty in an era of more-volatile inflation and less clarity about monetary-policy transmission, President Christine Lagarde said, Bloomberg News reported. “We should reflect on how our policy framework incorporates risk assessments,” she said Friday in a speech at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, referring to the ongoing review of the ECB’s policy strategy.

The European Union’s top official said on a trip to Kyiv on Friday that Europe would offer Ukraine a loan of 35 billion euros, about $39 billion, backed by frozen Russian assets, the New York Times reported. European leaders said the loan would move forward initially without contributions from the United States, after talks between American and European officials stalled in recent days. The official, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to reiterate Europe’s continued support for his country.

South Africa’s central bank cut interest rates for the first time in four years and signaled a more optimistic outlook for inflation, Bloomberg News reported. The monetary policy committee reduced its benchmark rate by 25 basis points to 8%, Governor Lesetja Kganyago told reporters at a briefing north of Johannesburg on Thursday. That matched the median estimate of 24 economists in a Bloomberg survey. Only one analyst had penciled in a 50 basis-point cut.

Soccer-mad Brazilians have fallen hard for online sports betting, yielding a boom of interest from foreign gambling companies that may boost state coffers but also threatens to divert funds from consumer spending in other areas, Reuters reported. Latin America's largest economy has seen lower-than-expected growth in consumer spending in the country in recent months, a weakness some banks and think tanks are blaming on gambling. Such a linkage would echo data seen in some U.S. states touched by online gambling fever.

AgroGalaxy’s financial struggles reached a critical point and the company, a major player in Brazil’s agricultural input retail sector, filed for judicial recovery on Sept. 18, the Rio Times reported. The decision to file for judicial recovery came after months of financial turmoil. AgroGalaxy’s board of directors approved the filing, which was submitted to the court under confidential terms. Earlier in the day prior to the filing, a series of high-profile resignations rocked the company’s leadership structure.

The Centre could soon put in place a creditor-led insolvency resolution mechanism, largely involving out-of-court arrangements for even big loan defaulting firms, to ease the bankruptcy court burden and quicken recoveries for lenders, people aware of the development told the Economic Times of India. The new mechanism will stipulate a shorter deadline for resolution, likely 150 days, compared with the 270 days (including a 90-day extension) currently stipulated under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC).

Sri Lanka said that has reached an agreement in principle with bondholders to restructure about $12.6 billion in bonds, just two days before the country heads to elections that have rattled investors, Bloomberg News reported. The government and bondholders agreed on terms including a “27% haircut on the nominal amount of existing bonds,” according to a statement released Thursday at the conclusion of a third round of talks. A previous statement in July referred to a 28% haircut.