Headlines

Canadian Overseas Petroleum Ltd. has filed bankruptcy in its home country and the U.S. and said that it intends to restructure, Bloomberg News reported. The Calgary-based oil and gas production company said its existing lenders have offered to provide as much as US$11 million in financing to fund its proposed restructuring. COPL said it has requested the immediate suspension on trading of its shares on both the London Stock Exchange and the Canadian Securities Exchange. COPL has sought a form of chapter 11 protection in Canada and filed for bankruptcy in Delaware to protect its U.S.

German electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Next.e.Go Mobile, which planned to build a factory in Bulgaria, has filed for insolvency amid industry challenges and capital market volatility, SeeNews.com reported. It is expected that other subsidiaries, including New York-listed Next.e.GO N.V., will initiate corresponding insolvency proceedings, German business news magazine Wirtschaftswoche reported last week. Next.e.Go Mobile intended to build three new micro-factories across Europe and the U.S., aiming to expand production of its small EVs for urban settings.

Deutsche Bank's chief executive officer said on Tuesday that he expects the current crisis in commercial real estate to continue in 2024 and that provisions for loan losses will be at the upper end of its projected range, Reuters reported. There won't be "overall big relief" to the challenges facing commercial real estate in 2024, CEO Christian Sewing said. Deutsche Bank is Germany's largest lender and also has the most in outstanding loans to the commercial real-state sector among its domestic competitors, data show.

Argentina’s central bank isn’t offering put options for peso bonds the government is selling this week in a record debt swap, a move that’s discouraged private banks from participating in the deal, Bloomberg News reported. The decision not to include puts — pledges to buy back bonds if they fall below a certain price — is key because they’re one of the main tools to persuade banks to swap peso bonds maturing this year for new notes that stretch between 2025 and 2028, the people said.

U.K. wage growth eased marginally, as the unemployment rate ticked up, a small relief to Bank of England policymakers hoping that labor pressures would ease ahead of expected interest-rate cuts later this year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The headline measure of average annual pay growth, excluding bonuses, was 6.1% in the three months to January, compared with 6.2% in the final quarter of 2023, a fifth fall in as many months, according to data published Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics. The rate was the lowest since October 2022.

Brazil's consumer prices rose slightly more than expected in February, reaching the highest monthly figure in one year driven by increased education prices, government statistics agency IBGE said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Inflation, measured by the IPCA index, was at 0.83% last month compared with January. Education prices rose 4.98% in the month, responsible for 0.29 percentage points of the data as schools and universities hike tuition fees at the start of the year. Food and beverage prices also contributed to the results, IBGE said.

UniCredit faces court hearings in Britain and Russia in the second quarter after a Russian energy company sued the Italian bank for failing to honour guarantee payments because of international sanctions, UniCredit said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Italian lenders Intesa Sanpaolo and UniCredit still have businesses in Russia, as Western sanctions following the Ukraine conflict curtailed the number of potential buyers and Moscow then passed laws that restrict divestments.

Signa’s flagship property unit is close to an agreement to sell a portfolio of luxury Austrian assets to Germany’s Schoeller Group, Bloomberg News reported. A deal may help Signa Prime Selection AG resolve a deadlock in its broader restructuring related to a previous loan deal with Schoeller. It would also be the first major transaction with property held by Rene Benko’s troubled empire since its insolvency at the end of last year.

Agricultural powerhouse Brazil is harvesting one bumper crop after another. Yet, growers are going bankrupt at an alarming rate, dealing a blow to investors in the fast-growing $7 billion market for agribusiness funding, Bloomberg News reported. Tumbling corn and soybean prices are sparking defaults, undermining returns for so-called Fiagros, the Brazilian investment funds backed by agricultural receivables such as interest, dividends and land-lease payments.

Canadian business insolvencies will likely remain elevated throughout 2024, experts said, as the economy plays catch-up after historically low levels during the pandemic, the Canadian Press reported. “We did have ... so many years of artificially low filings. We've got a fair bit of catch-up to do,” said Natasha MacParland, a partner at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP. The pandemic saw a historically low level of insolvency filings — which include bankruptcy and restructuring procedures — as government supports kicked in but in 2023 things started to normalize, said MacParland.