Headlines

Mexican conglomerate Alfa will not provide any financial guarantees to its telecommunications unit Axtel during the subsidiary's spin-off process, Alfa's top financial officer said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Axtel is expected to reach $35 million cash flow this year, sufficient to carry out its operations, Alfa Chief Financial Officer Eduardo Escalante said during a call with analysts to discuss second-quarter results.

As the 17 July 2022 deadline for Slovenia to implement the Directive (EU) 2019/1023 on Restructuring and Insolvency is fast approaching, it is still not entirely clear exactly when and how its provisions will be transposed into Slovenian law, Mondaq reported. A draft amendment of the main Slovenian insolvency law, the Financial Operations, Insolvency Proceedings, and Compulsory Dissolution Act (the "Insolvency Act"), which (among several other topics) provides for transposition, has been in circulation among various state authorities and the interested public for over a year.

A group of angry suppliers to China Evergrande Group are threatening to stop paying their bank loans to protest the struggling developer's unpaid bills, hitting a property sector already reeling from a mortgage-payment boycott, Nikkei Asia reported. China has seen a wave of debt defaults among real-estate developers including Evergrande, which is saddled with about $300 billion in liabilities.

The U.S. government has forced Mexico into negotiations over what Washington considers unfair practices that are effectively excluding U.S. and other foreign companies from the Mexican energy sector in violation of the free trade agreement they signed with Canada, the Associated Press reported. Mexico says it has received a similar notice from Canada related to its electricity law. The U.S.

Russia's foreign ministry on Thursday said that the latest round of European Union sanctions were illegitimate and would have "devastating consequences" for security and parts of the global economy, Reuters reported. European Union diplomats on Wednesday agreed on a new round of sanctions against Moscow for invading Ukraine, including a ban on importing gold from Russia and freezing the assets of the country's top lender Sberbank.

Argentina is loosening some currency restrictions for foreign tourists and importers as the peso’s unofficial exchange rates extended a month-long slump, Bloomberg reported. Importers of strategic sectors in the economy will have more access to dollars, the government said in a statement Thursday, as it seeks to avoid shortages of imported goods. Meanwhile, foreign tourists who are not residents in Argentina will be able to exchange as much as $5,000 for pesos at a more lucrative exchange rate than the official one, a measure aimed to shore up the local currency.

The European Central Bank will raise interest rates for the first time in 11 years on Thursday with a bigger-than-flagged move seen as increasingly likely as policymakers fear losing control of runaway consumer price growth, Reuters reported. With inflation already approaching double-digit territory, it is now at risk of getting entrenched above the ECB's 2% target, requiring rate hikes even if that slows — or crashes — an economy already suffering from the impact of Russia's war in Ukraine.

An Indian court agreed to send Future Retail Ltd. into bankruptcy, allowing the creditors to find a new owner for the beleaguered retailer that once operated the largest chain of department stores across the country and was the prized trophy for two retail sector giants, Bloomberg reported. The National Company Law Tribunal on Wednesday gave its verdict on a petition by Bank of India to start the bankruptcy-resolution process for the cash-strapped retailer. It dismissed allegations from the local unit of Amazon.com Inc.

New restrictions on U.S. dollars introduced last week by the Central Bank of Myanmar (CBM) have come as a crippling blow to businesses already struggling in an economic recession resulting from post-coup political turmoil and the COVID-19 pandemic, The Irrawaddy reported. The new restrictions saw the bank revoking the exemption from mandatory currency conversion given to companies with a minimum 10 percent foreign ownership.

Singapore law firms Advocatus Law, Solitaire LLP, WongPartnership, Latham & Watkins and offshore firm Ogier are advising on the downfall of cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund Three Arrows Capital Ltd (3AC), law.com reported. Until April this year, 3AC, which was established in 2012, had roughly $3 billion in assets under management. Its downfall was triggered in part by the collapse of algorithmic stablecoin, TerraUSD, and its sister token Luna in May.