Headlines

Recent debt restructurings of distressed Italian corporates, including ferry operator Moby, construction group Astaldi and building product company Officine Maccaferri, highlight bondholders’ exposure to greater complexities and uncertainties in Italian corporate restructuring processes compared to more creditor-friendly European jurisdictions, Fitch Ratings said in a report released today.

The Turkish lira plunged to a record low against the U.S. dollar Thursday after a harsher-than-expected cut in interest rates, the Associated Press reported. The decision by the Central Bank’s monetary committee to cut the rate from 18% to 16% surprised analysts. The lira dropped to 9.45 against the dollar, compounding a long run of losses. The cut, which came as inflation stands at nearly 20%, will be seen by many as further evidence of the bank’s lack of independence from the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Canadian home prices barely rose in September from August as a recent slowdown in housing sales weighed, data showed on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index, which tracks repeat sales of single-family homes in 11 major Canadian markets, rose 0.1% in September from August, marking the fourth consecutive month in which the monthly price increase was lower than the previous month.

Nothing embodied the promise of globalization more than the humble supply chain. Thanks to the integration of production across and within borders, consumers have come to expect infinite variety, instantly available. That is now under siege, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. The supply-chain crisis of 2021 is fueling the retreat from globalization, much as the global financial crisis of 2008 did. Three big forces are driving this latest crisis: Covid-19, climate and geopolitics.

The Irish government has moved in Finance Bill 2021 to close off a potential loophole in laws introduced during the summer to impose a 10 per cent stamp duty on bulk buyers of 10 or more houses within a one-year period, the Irish Times reported. The Bill, published on Thursday, seeks to insert a clarification into law that the stamp duty also applies to the “indirect” acquisition of a house by way of, for example, the purchase of shares in a company that owns a property.

European Union leaders pressured a defiant Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki Thursday to fall back into line on recognizing that EU law trumps national decision-making, hoping that dialogue will stave off a fundamental crisis in the bloc, the Associated Press reported. Morawiecki instead painted a picture of an overbearing union treating its 27 member nations as mere provinces, usurping ever more powers and feeling free to impose its values at will against the wishes of sovereign peoples.

China Evergrande Group has dropped plans to sell a 50.1% stake in its property services unit, which would have raised $2.6 billion, dealing another blow to the cash-strapped developer's efforts to raise cash to pay its creditors, Reuters reported. Once China's top-selling developer and now reeling under more than $300 billion in liabilities, Evergrande was in talks to sell the stake in Evergrande Property Services to smaller rival Hopson Development Holdings.

Asia Aviation Pcl, the operator of Thailand’s biggest budget carrier Thai AirAsia Co., plans to raise as much as 17.9 billion baht ($535 million) from new loans, share sales and convertible-debt offerings as it attempts to restock coffers depleted by the worst crisis in aviation history, Bloomberg News reported. A revised financial restructuring plan for the company has been put forward and Asia Aviation is consulting with new investors, shareholders and creditors, Asia Aviation said in an exchange filing late Tuesday.

The global upswing in trade is leaving the U.K. behind, an early sign of the challenge Brexit is presenting its economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K. formally began its new relationship with the European Union Jan. 1. Before then, and before the Covid-19 pandemic upended world trade, Jason Wouhra’s food wholesale business in England’s West Midlands, Lioncroft Wholesale Ltd., generated up to a quarter of its annual revenue from customers in Spain, Portugal and other markets in the EU. Lioncroft has now stopped exporting to the EU altogether.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak plans to extend a program of state-backed loans for U.K. businesses, one of the measures to aid the economy’s recovery from the worst recession in a century, Bloomberg News reported. The Recovery Loan Scheme was due to end Dec. 31 but will now be extended for a further six months, according to a person familiar with the Treasury’s plans who asked not to be named because discussions are still underway. Sunak is set to announce the decision in his budget on Oct. 27, the person said.