Hong Kong

Noble Group Ltd.’s crisis deepened on Tuesday after S&P Global Ratings flagged the risk that the embattled commodity trader may default on its debt, triggering a 36-minute plunge in the company’s shares, an exchange query, and a trading halt ahead of an announcement, Bloomberg News reported. “The negative outlook on Noble reflects the potential that the company will face distress and a non-payment of its debt obligations over the next 12 months,” S&P said in a statement late on Monday as it cut the company’s ratings by three steps to CCC+.

Hong Kong's Court of Appeal on Wednesday began hearing Moody's appeal against a tribunal decision that partly upheld regulatory action imposed on it for a report on Chinese firms, in what is considered a landmark case for the financial centre. Moody's Investors Service Hong Kong said in April it would challenge a March 2016 ruling by the Securities and Futures Appeals Tribunal (SFAT) upholding the securities regulator's claim that Moody's broke rules governing how regulated firms should behave when it published the report.

Kingdom Jewellery is trying to stand out among the eerily quiet luxury stores in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay, once the world’s most expensive shopping district in terms of rents. But while it has hung signs promoting a “crazy sale” and payment by instalments in the window, buyers are still scarce, the Financial Times reported. “Our customer flow has dropped 60-70 per cent” since the peak of Chinese luxury spending in 2013, says manager Jacky Sze.

Crypto-currency exchange Bitfinex, which lost $72 million to hackers last week, told customers on Sunday they would lose just over 36 percent of the assets they had on the platform but would be compensated for these losses with tokens of credit, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The Hong Kong-based exchange said losses from the theft would be shared, or "generalized", across all the company's clients and assets, widening the group of those affected announced last week.

Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd., which last year became the first Chinese real estate developer to default on dollar bonds, is seeking to use U.S. bankruptcy law to help its debt reorganization in a Hong Kong court, Bloomberg News reported. The Shenzhen, China-based company filed a Chapter 15 petition in Manhattan court Thursday. Companies use that provision of U.S. bankruptcy law to deal with U.S. creditors or lawsuits when reorganizing in another country.

McAleese has started exclusive negotiations with Hong Kong-based hedge fund SC Lowy over a financial restructuring and extended its trading suspension for another month, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. The troubled transport group received three indicative proposals from financial groups prepared to help fund a debt restructure, but has given SC Lowy exclusive negotiating rights until April 15. McAleese' net debt rose to $188 million in the six months to December compared with $170.5 million a year earlier and the company has a "current asset deficiency" of $163.2 million.

Mongolian Mining Corp. didn’t make principal and interest payments on a $200 million loan facility and wasn’t able to get a temporary waiver from banks, triggering a cross-default on its bonds, Bloomberg News reported. The miner failed to make the payments on the loan facility taken from BNP Paribas SA and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. in March 2014, and didn’t get a waiver from the lenders, according to a stock exchange filing. The situation constitutes a cross-default event in the terms of other indebtedness including its $600 million of 8.875 percent notes, it said.

Overseas loans by banks in Hong Kong fell significantly for the first time in more than four years in August, the month China surprised the world by devaluing its currency and effectively making loans at home much cheaper, The Wall Street Journal reported. Chinese borrowing accounts for a large portion of overseas lending by banks in the city, including foreign lenders. Overseas loans soared in the years when the yuan was rising and interest rates on the mainland were higher than those in Hong Kong. But in August such loans fell sharply. Because of its peg to the U.S.

For Hong Kong, it's been one thing after another. A series of anti-China and pro-democracy protests last year prompted stores to close and mainland tour groups to cancel bookings. Meanwhile, a slowing Chinese economy and President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption and austerity campaigns have also made the Chinese more wary of buying pricey cognac and Gucci bags in the city. While still the biggest outbound destination for Chinese tour groups, Hong Kong is in danger of losing its lead.

With Hong Kong riven by political deadlock, politicians and investors have repeatedly warned in recent years that the financial centre risks sliding into irrelevance as its Chinese rivals Shanghai and Shenzhen go from strength to strength, the Financial Times reported. But some argue that China’s latest bout of stock market turmoil — and Beijing’s panicked response — has provided an unexpected boon to Hong Kong, highlighting the open nature of its financial markets and its more robust regulatory system.