Headlines

Turkey’s reform package laid out last week won’t be enough to restore Turkish households’ and foreign investors’ confidence in the lira, one of S&P Global’s top sovereign analysts said on Monday, Reuters reported. Turkey pledged last week to inject almost $5 billion into its state-owned banks to help them cope with an expected rise in defaults following the country’s slump into recession, but the plan has been criticised for being light on detail.

The top shareholder of South Korea’s second-largest carrier, Asiana Airlines, said on Monday it would sell its entire stake in the debt-ridden firm to keep it afloat, sending shares of the carrier and its budget arm 30 percent higher, Reuters reported. The move caps weeks of financial uncertainty involving the carrier which started last month when it failed to win auditors’ sign-off on its 2018 financial statements, triggering warnings of credit ratings downgrades and the resignation of the parent group’s chairman.

Royal Bank of Scotland has been accused of “kicking people when they’re down” by enforcing aggressive debt collection policies against customers who own leasehold properties, the Financial Times reported. The taxpayer-owned bank forces mortgage customers who fall into arrears owing to disputes with their freeholder or property management company to repay the debt within 12 months or face repossession, despite a longstanding legal precedent that allows most borrowers to repay mortgage arrears over the remaining term of their loan.

Greek revival is an architectural style involving columns of marble. It’s also a good description of a ridiculed nation’s prestige among investors, involving columns of numbers measuring unexpected economic durability, a Bloomberg View reported. Global investors snapped up 2.5 billion euros worth of Greece’s 10-year bonds last month, the first such offering in nine years. That made the Hellenic Republic's debt the world’s most prized, buoyed by gross domestic product growth that’s outperforming Germany, France and the euro zone.

CWT International Ltd., controlled by HNA Group Co., failed to pay interest on a HK$1.4 billion ($179 million) facility, prompting lenders to demand immediate repayment of the loan, the company said Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported. The Hong Kong-listed company will have to make good on the payment by 9 a.m. April 17 to prevent lenders from taking action, it said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

Cyprus is weighing an early repayment for part of a 2.5 billion-euro ($2.8 billion) Russian loan that dates back to the low point of the financial crisis, two government officials said, after yields on the country’s 10-year debt hit a record low last week, Bloomberg News reported. While the government is seriously considering early repayment, no final decision has been made yet, said one of the officials, who asked not to be named citing the ongoing decision-making process.

Trafigura Group Ltd. will take control of Nyrstar NV, Europe’s biggest zinc smelter, as part of a deal to restructure the struggling company’s debt and steer it away from bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Under the agreement, Trafigura -- Nyrstar’s main shareholder as well as a top supplier, customer and financier -- offered a package of its own debt securities to Nyrstar’s creditors in exchange for them writing off debt.

Privinvest Group began arbitration proceedings against three state-owned Mozambican companies to seek compensation for losses the shipbuilder says it incurred after contractual breaches, Bloomberg News reported. The legal action marks a step change in Privinvest’s response to charges against employees including salesman Jean Boustani by the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ alleges Boustani and others stole about $200 million in Mozambique-loan proceeds in an indictment that stems from Mozambique’s $2 billion hidden-debt scandal.

Italy’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Parmalat against a lower court ruling that it pay $431 million in damages to Citibank in a case stemming from the dairy group’s bankruptcy more than 15 years ago, Reuters reported. Reuters reviewed a copy of the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday. Parmalat, now owned by France’s Lactalis, collapsed in 2003 after the discovery of a 14 billion euro ($15.8 billion) hole in its accounts.

Struggling Brazilian airline Avianca Brasil had told regulators that it was permanently cancelling several routes as of Monday despite continuing to sell tickets for them on its website, according to a letter seen by Reuters. The airline, which has been fighting aircraft lessors in bankruptcy court, told civil aviation regulator ANAC in the letter sent on Friday that it was ending 48 flight frequencies — around a quarter of its capacity — due to a shrinking fleet, Reuters reported.