Headlines

Brazilian police said they seized seven cars, including a white Lamborghini, and $32,490 in cash, computers, watches and other items on Friday from embattled oil and mining tycoon Eike Batista, who is on trial for insider trading in Rio de Janeiro, Reuters reported. Batista resigned as chairman of Oleo E Gas Participações SA , the flagship firm in his once-expansive EBX conglomerate on Jan. 27, two months after the trial started. The company formerly known as OGX is emerging from Latin America's largest-ever bankruptcy restructuring.

The business rescue plan for the furniture arm of failed South African lender Abil has realised a better cash position than had been earlier hoped, administrators said in a report. The retailer with debts adding up to around 1.3 billion rand ($115 million) was forced into business rescue last year, which allows for temporary protection from creditors, as parent African Bank Investments (Abil) crumbled under bad debts.

The board of troubled British insurance company Towergate has agreed a deal with its bondholders, which will see the company taken over by its unsecured creditors, the company said on Friday. News of the deal had earlier been confirmed to IFR by a source close to the situation. Under the terms of the deal the unsecured bondholders led by Highbridge Capital Management, KKR and Sankaty will between them provide 300 million pounds ($457.26 million)of cash, 250 million pounds of which will used to pay senior secured bondholders, with 50 million pounds invested into Towergate itself.

With their store leases up for grabs, major Target Canada landlords are suggesting the insolvent discounter be pushed into all-out bankruptcy as a way to remove the retailer from controlling the lease sales and other wind-down proceedings, The Globe and Mail reported. The landlords’ Target leases could fetch $1.8-billion to $2-billion, according to one analyst. But under the current court-monitored insolvency process, the auctioning of their leases is essentially being run by the departing retailer.

Japan's Skymark airlines, which last week filed for bankruptcy protection, will seek other sponsors alongside investment fund Integral Corp to help turn its business around, Skymark and Integral said on Thursday. Skymark filed for protection from creditors with total liabilities of 71.09 billion yen ($605.7 million). Integral has agreed to provide 9 billion yen to help keep the business going, said Nobuo Sayama, representative director of the fund.

As he raced between European capitals, Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s flamboyant leftwing finance minister, would have enjoyed reading McKinsey & Co’s study this week on global debt “deleveraging” — or rather, the lack of it, the Financial Times reported. The consultancy’s 47-country survey highlighted how indebtedness has increased much faster than economic growth since 2007, and argued for “fresh approaches” to reduce the dangers of future financial crises. To Germany’s particular horror, that was just what Mr Varoufakis is proposing for Greece’s debt mountain.

Vietnam’s central bank appears to be fulfilling its recent promise to accelerate the restructuring of the country’s banking system, which is burdened with non-performing loans, The Wall Street Journal Frontiers blog reported. This week, the central bank announced it had taken over the unlisted Vietnam Construction Bank, which has reportedly been losing money, and put it under the management of the Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam — known as Vietcombank — which is more than 90% state-owned.

Angola has dramatically slashed its budget for the year and is reaching out to the World Bank and international lenders for at least $1bn in loans as Africa’s second-biggest oil producer and one of the continent’s star economic performers grapples with the fallout from the collapse in crude prices, the Financial Times reported. Luanda has already approached Goldman Sachs and Gemcorp Capital LLP, a small London-based investment firm set up last year, for loans of $250m from each institution. Both groups declined to comment.

The International Monetary Fund said Thursday it will provide a total of $100 million in debt relief and another $160 million in low-interest financing for the three West African countries hardest hit by the Ebola crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported. The deadly Ebola epidemic has slammed the economies of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone as the health disaster slashed state revenues and crisis costs overwhelmed the governments’ budgets.

The administrators for foreign exchange broker Alpari UK have been unable to sell the business after the company was crippled by losses caused by Switzerland's removal of its cap on the Swiss franc, Reuters reported. The joint administrators from KPMG said on Thursday they had sold the firm's intellectual property assets, including the Alpari trademark, to co-founder and main shareholder Andrey Dashin.