Headlines

One of Thames Water Ltd.’s key bondholders says a turnaround of the company envisioned by the government regulator has raised the likelihood of significant losses on its top-ranked securities, Bloomberg News reported. Luke Hickmore, investment director at Abrdn Investment Management Ltd., said it will be harder for the UK’s biggest water and sewage company to attract a new buyer without imposing losses on creditors. He believes the chances of a 15%-20% loss on the Class A bonds, which make up most of Thames Water’s debt, has gone up.

China's economy grew much slower than expected in the second quarter as a protracted property downturn and job insecurity knocked the wind out of a fragile recovery, keeping alive expectations Beijing will need to unleash even more stimulus, Reuters reported. The world's second-largest economy grew 4.7% in April-June, official data showed, its slowest since the first quarter of 2023. It also slowed from the previous quarter's 5.3% expansion.

For years, Liuzhou and scores of other Chinese cities together amassed trillions of dollars in off-the-books debt for economic development projects. The opaque financing was the yeast that helped China rise to the envy of the world. Today, overgrown construction sites, sparsely used highways and abandoned tourist attractions make much of that debt-fueled growth look illusory and suggests China’s future is far from assured, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Four Australian banks will give back a total of A$28 million ($18.95 million) to low-income customers, after a review by the corporate regulator found these customers had been kept in high-fee bank accounts despite being eligible for cheaper products, Reuters reported. A report released by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) on Monday said ANZ, Commonwealth Bank Of Australia, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank and Westpac had kept at least two million customers in accounts under which they charged high fees.

France’s state auditor said existing plans to repair “worrying” public finances lack credibility, sounding the alarm on the budget as political groups with expansive tax-and-spend policies jockey to form a new government after snap elections, Bloomberg News reported. President Emmanuel Macron’s outgoing administration pledged new spending cuts and revenue-boosting measures in April to get back on course with derailed plans to bring the budget deficit within 3% of economic output in 2027.

Argentina's economy ministry said on Sunday it will purchase just over $1.5 billion from the central bank to pay the total interest on the country's "Globales" and "Bonares" bonds due in January 2025, Reuters reported. The operation will use part of the financial surplus achieved in the first half of the year, which had accumulated to 2.3 trillion Argentine pesos ($2.5 billion) by May, the ministry said in a statement. The ministry added that $1.528 billion will be deposited in an account at trustee Bank of New York and will be available only to be used for paying the interest on the bonds.

A major Cambodian payments firm received crypto worth over $150,000 from a digital wallet used by North Korean hacking outfit Lazarus, blockchain data shows, a glimpse of how the criminal collective has laundered funds in Southeast Asia, Reuters reported. Huione Pay, which is based in Phnom Penh and offers currency exchange, payments and remittance services, received the crypto between June 2023 and February this year, according to the previously unreported blockchain data reviewed by Reuters.

Loose bond documentation that flourished in the easy-money era has left investors vulnerable to asset stripping in recent debt deals. Now they’re fighting back, Bloomberg News reported. In the past week alone, two junk borrowers — Italian luxury supplier Rino Mastrotto and Vodafone Spain — have included stricter provisions in documentation for new bonds that restrict their ability to move assets out of reach of creditors. Clauses in both cases were focused on payments to so-called “unrestricted subsidiaries,” or entities that are not bound by the covenants of a debt agreement.

The number of resolved cases under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) may beat last year's record in FY25, the chief of the bankruptcy regulator said on Friday, the Economic Times of India reported. About 270 insolvency cases were resolved under the IBC last fiscal year, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) chairman Ravi Mittal said at an event organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). This was way beyond the annual average of 125 cases that saw resolution since the IBC was rolled out in late 2016, he added.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has ordered initiation of insolvency resolution proceedings against Simbhaoli Sugars Ltd on a petition filed nearly six years ago. The plea was filed in September 2018 by erstwhile Oriental Bank of Commerce which has been merged with state-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) now, the Economic Times of India reported. The lender had sought initiation of Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) against the company under section 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. "...