Kenya’s ARM Cement has been put into administration, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a statement on Saturday, days after ARM Cement’s chief executive officer said he was relinquishing his post but staying on its board, Reuters reported. PWC’s Muniu Thoiti and George Weru have been appointed as joint administrators. PWC’s statement, published in local newspapers, said the administration, under Kenya’s Insolvency Act, was effective on Aug. 17.

ARM Cement Ltd. of Kenya has yet to reach an agreement with the International Finance Corp. about a capital injection in the struggling Kenyan company, Chief Executive Officer Pradeep Paunrana said. Business Daily, a Kenyan newspaper, reported Wednesday that the IFC had agreed to take over $120 million in loans in a bid to settle ARM’s more expensive debt, Bloomberg News reported.

The proprietor of Jack and Jill supermarket in Nairobi Ahmed Noorani has been told to wait longer before taking any action against a businessman who owes him Sh167 million, The Standard reported. High Court judge Francis Tuiyot said Friday businessman Rajendra Sanghani's insolvency case must be determined before Noorani can take actions. Sanghani owes Noorani Sh167, 270,500 as the balance for a Sh477,100,000 unsecured loan advanced between August 1, 2012 and April 26, 2018. He filed for restructuring at the High Court and sought interim orders under Section 304 of the Insolvency Act.

National Bank of Kenya Ltd., which has the biggest bad-loan book in the Kenyan banking industry, is considering closing some of its 85 branches to cut costs, Chief Executive Officer Wilfred Musau said, Bloomberg News reported. Lenders in East Africa’s biggest economy are being forced to lower expenses after a government-imposed cap on commercial lending rates impaired their ability to provide loans and as consumers embrace digital banking, including Safaricom Ltd.’s M-Pesa platform.

Kenya Airways will be almost 90 per cent owned by the Kenyan government and a group of 11 local banks under a restructuring deal to be unveiled on Monday, after the terms of a debt for equity swap for the lossmaking airline were agreed, the Financial Times reported. The Kenyan government will own 48.9 per cent of Kenya Airways and the banks 38.1 per cent after the debt-for-equity swap, agreed in principle in June.

Kenya’s Nakumatt is seeking court protection to rebuild its fortunes after creditors demanded millions of dollars owed by a company that grew from a small Rift Valley bed shop to become East Africa’s biggest supermarket chain, Reuters reported. One source close to the company, whose flagship Nairobi store was destroyed in the 2013 Westgate attack by Somali militants, said it owed creditors including landlords and suppliers as much as 20 billion shillings ($193 million). In January, the managing director of the chain, Atul Shah, told Reuters the debt then stood at $150 million.

Kenya's central bank said on Friday it planned to extend the receivership of Imperial Bank by a year to help finalise a deal with a strategic investor to take a stake in the bank, Reuters reported. The regulator also said it had granted a licence to a new locally owned bank, Mayfair Bank Limited, the second such licence since 2015, when it imposed a moratorium on approving new lenders.

Kenya’s government agreed to swap loans it provided to Kenya Airways Ltd. for equity, a conversion that may give the state a controlling stake in the national carrier, Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich said. The government will also guarantee 77 billion shillings ($745 million) of the airline’s debt to lessors and domestic banks, enabling Kenya Airways to extend its loan repayments to 10 years, Rotich told reporters Tuesday in the capital, Nairobi, Bloomberg News reported. The government has yet to decide what amount of loans it will swap, he said.

Kenya Airways expects to unveil a big capital restructuring in the next two months as part of its turnround strategy after returning to operational profitability following four years of losses, the Financial Times reported. Mbuvi Ngunze, who steps down as chief executive next week, said the airline, which slashed its loss before tax by 61 per cent in the year to March 2017, “is not out of the woods yet”.

Kenya Airways is about to conclude its capital restructuring, its chairman said on Wednesday, edging closer to putting past financial woes behind it, the carrier's chairman said, Reuters reported. The airline, part-owned by the state and AirFrance KLM, sank into the red four years ago after tourism slumped following a spate of attacks in Kenya by militants from the Somalia-based al Shabaab Islamist group. Last year the carrier had negative equity of 35 billion shillings ($339 million), Reuters data showed, and the business was sustained by shareholder loans.