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The largest unit in the troubled real estate group founded by Rene Benko is urgently seeking €600 million ($647 million) of financing from funds as it prepares to file for insolvency, Bloomberg News reported. Under the terms of a deal proposed by Signa Prime, investors would provide €300 million of so-called debtor-in-possession financing by Tuesday, with the remainder made available at a later stage of the process, according to people familiar with the matter. The cash would finance the company’s restructuring under an insolvency process known as self-administration in Austria.
A Sao Paulo judge on Tuesday approved bankruptcy protection for SouthRock Capital, which runs all Starbucks coffee shops and TGI Fridays restaurants in Brazil, according to a court filing, Reuters reported. SouthRock had filed for protection from creditors in late October. SouthRock said in a statement that with the approval, it will continue to restructure operations with the aim of protecting employees and customers, while it intends to keep operating stores as normal.
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While private equity funds were prepared to keep injecting capital during the pandemic, believing that profits would stabilize again once normal operations resumed, now they are looking more selectively at the long-term viability of the companies they own, Bloomberg News reported. “Sponsors have to pick which businesses to keep supporting,” said David Morris, a senior managing director and head of the UK restructuring practice at FTI Consulting. “Part of that will depend on how far away they think they are from value and the speed at which they could go back to value.
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Capital buffers for banks in the European Union have reached historic highs, with rises in interest rates boosting profitability to support record payouts to shareholders, the bloc's banking watchdog said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Since taxpayers bailed out lenders in the 2007-09 global financial crisis, tougher rules have forced banks to build up their capital buffers, with further rises in the pipeline.
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Three Arrows Capital co-founder Su Zhu for the first time faced questioning in a Singapore court about the crypto fund’s collapse, giving liquidators their best chance yet to gather information as they seek to recoup billions of dollars for creditors, Bloomberg News reported. The two-day court hearing this week required Zhu to respond to lawyers for the liquidator, Teneo, people familiar with the matter said. The lawyers sought details including how the fund failed and the whereabouts of assets, the people said, asking not to be named as the proceedings were private.
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New bank lending in China jumped less than expected in November, even as the central bank keeps policy accommodative to support a feeble recovery in the world's second-largest economy, Reuters reported. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) is expected to deliver more modest policy easing in the coming weeks, following a pledge this week by top leaders to step up policy adjustments to support the economic recovery in 2024, analysts said.
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Canada’s small business minister is resisting a push to give companies more time to repay pandemic-era loans from the government, despite warnings from a lobby group that 250,000 firms are at risk if she doesn’t, Bloomberg News reported. Rechie Valdez, who was sworn into the cabinet post in July, said the government has been flexible by pushing back the deadline multiple times already and offering billions in support to small business. “I don’t think we’re giving small businesses enough credit. They’re unbelievably resilient,” she said in an interview in her Ottawa office.
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Britain's payments regulator on Wednesday provisionally proposed a cap on cross-border interchange fees on retailers and other businesses charged by Mastercard (MA.N) and Visa (V.N) on transactions made between the UK and European single market, Reuters reported. The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) said a cap would protect businesses from overpaying, after it published interim findings of a market review on interchange fees charged since Brexit, when the bloc's longstanding cap ceased to apply in Britain.
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Australian home prices just hit a high in what was already one of the world’s most expensive real-estate markets. Now, Australian officials say they have a plan that will help to make housing more affordable: curtailing migration, the Wall Street Journal reported. A new policy, unveiled this week, will result in a 14% reduction in migrants over the next four years than would otherwise be expected, according to government forecasts.
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The City of London, Britain’s historic financial district, is awash with construction, the intensity of which is not expected to let up soon, the New York Times reported. The City of London Corporation, the district’s governing body, has approved 10 new office towers, including one that will exceed the height of all others in the area, known locally as the Square Mile. Altogether, more than five million square feet of office space is under construction, with another five million square feet in the pipeline.
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