Headlines

Germany has hired a number of investment banks for a new syndicated 30-year bond sale on Monday, according to memos from two lead managers seen by Reuters. The bond, due 15 August 2053, will carry a coupon of 1.8% and "will be launched and priced in the near future, subject to market conditions," the memos said, a phrase debt management offices usually use a day before a sale. Germany hired Barclays, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan for the sale, the memos said. Read more.

A lending service in the cryptocurrency sector said a debtor had defaulted on a $3.4 million loan, a development that highlights the potential for ongoing stress in the digital-asset marketplace, Bloomberg News reported. Decentralized lending protocol TrueFi said in a blog post Monday that South Korea’s Blockwater Technologies had missed a payment due in stablecoin Binance USD. Blockwater couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

A missed debt payment by the developer of Legoland Korea theme park adds to difficulties faced by the nation’s real estate market already weakened by surging interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. The amusement park opened in May just as turmoil in global debt markets made it much pricier for Korean borrowers including developers to refinance debt. Commercial paper repackaging 205 billion won ($144 million) of loans for the Legoland Korea project wasn’t paid on the maturity date of Sept. 29, according to backers of the project.

Venezuela’s creditors welcomed its potential rapprochement with the U.S. but still face risks and uncertainties in collecting from the South American country’s bankrupt government as its relations with Washington, D.C.'s thaw, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. A rollback of U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan oil points a way to resolving the country’s huge foreign debt obligations, but offers no immediate fix for its longstanding default, according to sanctions experts and other people close to its top external creditors.

The Canadian government’s purchase of the Trans Mountain Corp. pipeline will end up sticking the country’s taxpayers with a large debt that won’t be repaid, an environmental law group warned, Bloomberg News reported. A 70% rise in the cost to expand the sole oil pipeline running from Alberta to the Pacific Coast increased the project’s debt to C$25.8 billion ($18.9 billion), West Coast Environmental Law said in a report written by economist Robyn Allan and released on Thursday.

Foreign bank branches in the European Union would not automatically become a costlier subsidiary if their business reached a certain "systemic" size, the Czech EU presidency proposed on Thursday, Reuters reported. The EU's executive European Commission surprised foreign banks last October when it proposed tightening oversight of how foreign banks can serve customers in the 27-member bloc. The move follows Britain's exit from the EU, which has left a competing major global banking centre on its doorstep.

The German Cabinet on Wednesday approved plans to loosen insolvency rules until the end of next year in the face of exploding energy and raw material prices, Reuters reported. The planned easing of the law, which must be put to parliament, applies to the obligation to file for insolvency in the case of over-indebtedness. Companies are to be exempt from this if they can prove that their business is financed for the next four months rather than the current 12-month requirement.

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party is looking to provide new support for heavily indebted firms amid fears that some of them may go bust after a Covid-related credit program ends, a senior party official said, Bloomberg News reported. “The public and private sectors need to cooperate quickly to provide aid,” said Satsuki Katayama, head of the LDP’s Research Commission on the Finance and Banking Systems in an interview last month.

World trade in goods is projected to slow sharply next year under the weight of high energy prices, rising interest rates and war-related disruptions, raising the risk of a global recession, according to a new forecast, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Total exports and imports of goods are likely to grow by just 1% in 2023, the World Trade Organization said on Wednesday. That would be down from its previous forecast of 3.4% and its forecast of 3.5% for this year.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will propose changes for the World Bank and regional development banks Thursday, pushing them to move beyond country-specific loans to address global threats and speed the flow of private capital to poor and emerging economies, Bloomberg News reported. “The evolution of these banks will require changes to incentives, operating models and uses of the banks’ financial resources,” Yellen plans to say in a speech she’s scheduled to deliver in Washington at the Center for Global Development think tank. Portions of the remarks were seen by Bloomberg News.