Headlines

The civil aviation ministry is awaiting guidelines from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on a debt restructuring package for the aviation sector, as it will help the ailing airlines bridge mounting losses, DNA India reported. "The RBI has to come up with guidelines for the restructuring of debt of the aviation sector. As far as my ministry is concerned, we support it... I believe that the RBI is actively looking into the issue," civil aviation minister Praful Patel told reporters in New Delhi.

Plunging fruit prices and a run of bad weather have tipped orchard industry stalwart John Corboy's business into receivership. Acting on behalf of Westpac, receivers James Stewart and Peter McCluskey of Ferrier Hodgson took control of Corboy Fresh Fruit on Friday, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Mr Corboy, a tireless campaigner against loosening restrictions on overseas fruit entering Australia, said his business had endured ''a very tough decade''. He said the business had been forced to buy water because of drought and endured two ''one-in-a-hundred-year frosts''.

The destruction of the old Hanover debenture holders' wealth will continue if Allied Farmers' planned $19 million equity raising ever makes it off the ground, The Dominion Post reported in a commentary. The temporary delay announced this week in Allied Farmers' capital raising shows what a tightrope the company is walking, trying to placate bankers, trustees and underwriters. It has to fix its core debt problem and problems with its finance company with only limited access to new capital.

Debt-ridden airline Mexicana de Aviacion needs a cash injection of at least $100 million to keep flying, the company's chief executive said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. "What we are looking for is between $100 million and $150 million," Chief Executive Manuel Borja said in an interview with Radio Formula. Time is ticking for troubled Mexicana, which has ceased flying more than a dozen international routes and stopped selling tickets after requesting creditor protection last week under Mexico's insolvency law, or concurso mercantil. The company has yet to be declared bankrupt.

The McCormick Macnaughton Caterpillar dealership in the Republic has been taken over by Canadian firm Finning, but the group’s rental businesses have ceased trading, The Irish Times reported. Assets belonging to three rental-related companies in the McCormick Macnaughton group, including three premises, will be sold off at an auction scheduled for September 4th. Management at Finning, the world’s largest Caterpillar dealer, took over the running of the dealership in west Dublin on Monday.

U.K. banks and other creditors are speeding up commercial-property sales of distressed assets partly because they are concerned the recent increase in prices may be leveling off, The Wall Street Journal reported. But buyers shouldn't expect cheap property to flood the market and reduce prices. While banks will accelerate property sales, they will continue to sell assets in an orderly manner to protect prices in a recovering market, observers said. The assets coming on the market include distressed real estate taken over as well as troubled loans whose borrowers have defaulted.

Japan Airlines Corp, the debt-ridden group undergoing a state-backed rehabilitation process, will cut its workforce by 19,133 by the end of March 2015, the Kyodo news agency reported, citing a final draft of JAL's rehabilitation plan. The draft said JAL will expand its previously announced retirement program and shed 8,339 jobs through fiscal 2014 ending March 2015, the Japanese news agency said. JAL's earlier plan was to cut about 16,000 jobs during the current fiscal year started April, the news agency said.

The Breakers restaurant chain plans to continue expanding, despite the receivership of two related firms, BusinessDay.co.nz reported. The franchise firm will soon open Breakers Cafe and Bar sites in Gisborne and Dannevirke, and look to head to the South Island. National franchising manager Simon Withnall said yesterday that Breakers New Zealand Franchising Ltd, owned by Mark and Penny Burt, was not adversely affected by two other Burt firms going into receivership.

VAT Nadra Bank, under temporary administration by Ukraine’s central bank, said it finished restructuring foreign debt as the lender seeks to qualify for government aid, Bloomberg reported. Nadra, based in Kiev, has restructured $877 million of international obligations, including Eurobonds, the bank said today on its website, without providing the terms of its agreement with creditors. Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Tigipko said May 21 that the government was ready to help the bank once the international debt was restructured.

Like a shipwrecked sailor on a starvation diet, the new British coalition government is preparing to shrink down to its bare bones as it cuts expenditures by $130 billion over the next five years and drastically scales back its responsibilities, The New York Times reported. The result, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a research group, will be “the longest, deepest sustained period of cuts to public services spending” since World War II. Until recently, the cuts were just election talking points, early warnings of a new age of austerity. But now the pain has begun.