Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc’s bond risk quadrupled this year as the automaker plays catch-up on electric vehicles and is hit by weakened demand in China. Moody’s Investors Service is warning of more tough days ahead, Bloomberg News reported. Moody’s on Nov. 13 cut its rating on Jaguar, owned by India’s Tata Motors Ltd., to Ba3, three levels below investment grade. Jaguar’s weak operating performance “will likely continue over at least the next 12-18 months” and it will weigh on the parent’s performance too, it said.
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An Indian tribunal has ruled that UltraTech Cement Ltd’s more than $1 billion bid for the cement unit of Binani Industries Ltd was valid, UltraTech said on Wednesday. UltraTech offered to buy Binani Cement in March after its parent Binani Industries approached UltraTech to arrange funds for paying-off bank debts and other liabilities, in a bid to terminate the insolvency proceeding against its unit, Reuters reported.
Indian developer rupee bond sales have slumped to the lowest in almost four years as investors become more cautious about default risks after the shock from non-payments by Infrastructure & Leasing Financial Services Ltd, Bloomberg News reported. With just two deals in October, issuance dropped to 3.9 billion rupees ($54 million), the least since November 2014. That was down from 18.9 billion rupees the previous month, according to Bloomberg data. No new bonds have priced this month. Dwindling sales may make it harder for developers to repay $4.9 billion of debt that comes due in 2019.
Two sugar mills in Brazil owned by India’s Shree Renuka Sugars Ltd, which filed for bankruptcy protection three years ago, will be put up for sale in a judicial auction on Dec. 18, according to court documents seen by Reuters on Wednesday, Reuters reported. U.S.-based fund Castlelake is among the interested parties in the auction, two sources following Renuka’s court case told Reuters. Brazil’s Grupo Teston, which makes equipment for the sugar industry, is also a potential bidder, the sources said. Castlelake and Teston had no immediate comment.
In India, NBFCs and lenders to the housing sector have become increasingly important in supporting consumer spending as the nation’s formal banking sector is weighed down by bad loans, Bloomberg News reported. Nomura Inc. estimates that the loan books of NBFCs and housing lenders have grown at a compounded annual rate of 17 percent in the past two years, compared with 8 percent for banks. Such growth looks difficult to sustain as liquidity dries up, with the Bloomberg Economics India Banking Liquidity Index showing a nearly 1 trillion rupee shortfall of cash in the banking system.
In India, crises move slowly. We’ve known for years that the state-controlled banks that dominate the financial sector were groaning under the weight of bad loans, a Bloomberg View reported. For years, though, the government successfully kicked the can down the road. All those assets haven’t been accounted for yet, the banks haven’t been fully recapitalized, the bankruptcy process isn’t working to schedule, yet somehow the banks are still chugging along. India’s luck may be about to run out.
Debt-laden Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Service (IL&FS) has initiated steps to explore the sale of certain assets, as it attempts to move forward on a restructuring plan for the wider group, the company said in a statement on Monday, Reuters reported. The firm said IL&FS’ board has decided to publicly solicit expressions of interest for its stakes in both IL&FS Securities Services, and ISSL Settlement & Transaction Services, which both play in the financial services space.
Essar Steel India sought a liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargo on an online trading platform this week, three industry sources said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The company, a unit of Indian commodity conglomerate Essar Group, was seeking a cargo on a delivered ex-ship (DES) basis for delivery into Dahej over Dec. 28-29, the sources said. It sought a cargo through LNG trading marketplace Global LNG Exchange (GLX) on Wednesday but did not attract any offers, one of the sources said.
A top Indian government official on Monday said the nation’s non-banking housing finance companies were facing liquidity stress, in comments that are likely to put more pressure on the Indian central bank to ease its policy towards the sector, Reuters reported. The intervention by Corporate Affairs Secretary Injeti Srinivas came after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and other government officials raised the issue of a liquidity crunch at a meeting with Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Governor Urjit Patel and other regulators last week.
India's Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) fears significant default from large non-banking finance companies (NBFC) and housing finance companies in the next six weeks if no additional liquidity support is provided to these firms, business news website MoneyControl said here on Friday, Reuters reported. The DEA, in a letter to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, described the financial situation as "still fragile" when discussing the financial stability impact of the Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Service Ltd's (IL&FS) default, the website said.