North Africa/Middle East

A U.S. court is expected on June 11 to confirm the restructuring plan of Bahrain-based Arcapita , the company said, making it the first Gulf company to file for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 rules, Thomson Reuters News & Insight reported. Like most investment companies in the region, Arcapita was hit by the financial crisis as it struggled to exit its investments and its fee income from raising fresh funds in the Gulf Arab region collapsed.

Nochi Dankner, the chairman of debt-ridden Israeli conglomerate IDB Holding Corp, won a key battle in a fight with bondholders, with a Tel Aviv court allowing Dankner to keep control of the company albeit with outside supervision, Reuters reported. Many of the companies IDB owns have been hard hit by a combination of slowing economic growth and increased competition. IDB Development, a unit of IDB Holding Corp , owes nearly 6 billion shekels ($1.7 billion) in total debt and its bondholders have charged that the company should be declared insolvent and cannot pay its debts.

After two weeks of negotiations over a possible $4.8bn loan deal to prop up Egypt’s flailing economy, an IMF team will probably return on Tuesday without a deal to Washington, where talks are likely to proceed, officials and diplomats said, the Financial Times reported. Hisham Qandil, Egyptian prime minister, told Bloomberg News that negotiations over terms of the loan may continue on the sidelines of the IMF’s spring conference in Washington.

Egypt needs IMF money to stay afloat, but the international lender is demanding tough subsidy cuts from an already-embattled government, The Christian Science Monitor reported. President Mohamed Morsi is facing decision time on a national financial crisis that dwarfs the one Sadat faced 35 years ago. President Morsi's government recently announced a rationing plan for subsidized bread that it claims won't affect the poor.

Dana Gas, the Abu Dhabi-listed energy firm, postponed the shareholder vote for restructuring of the $920 million sukuk to April 23 after a meeting on Sunday failed to meet the required quorum, Gulf News reported on a Reuters story. This is the second time the meeting has been rescheduled after a majority was not reached at a shareholder meet on March 21. Dana announced the new date in a filing on the Abu Dhabi bourse.

Dana Gas, the Abu Dhabi-listed energy firm, said a shareholder meeting to vote on the restructuring of the $920 million sukuk did not met the required quorum, Reuters reported. A new meeting has been scheduled for March 21, the company said in a filing to the Abu Dhabi stock exchange on Thursday. Dana became the first company in UAE to miss repayment of a maturing bond on October 31 but agreed new terms with a creditor committee representing bondholders, which included investment firms Ashmore Group and BlackRock, a week later.

Egypt may qualify for an International Monetary Fund bridge loan of more than $700 million a year that could help Cairo stave off collapse of its crisis-stricken economy, an IMF official said on Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported. "Egypt needs bold and ambitious policy actions to address its economic and financial challenges without further delay," IMF spokeswoman Wafa Amr said.

Egypt is at risk of a "revolution of the hungry" two years after Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising, as food and energy prices will soar with or without an IMF deal, Reuters reported in an analysis. Failure to get the $4.8 billion (£3.17 billion) loan or some other funding would have dire consequences: if Egypt keeps burning foreign currency at the rate it has done since the 2011 uprising, it will have none left in little more than a year. But success would also stir Egypt's boiling social and political cauldron.

Egypt seems to realise the money has nearly run out and it must turn to the IMF or a willing friend in the Gulf, where it now has just one, Qatar, Reuters reported. After months of delays, the Islamist government has produced a new plan to reverse a slide in its foreign currency reserves and tackle a budget deficit that could overwhelm a stable wealthy nation, let alone a country riven by political conflict. This plan relies on someone else stumping up to keep the Arab world's most populous nation afloat.

Small carrier Bahrain Air said on Tuesday it was shutting down, blaming political unrest in the island kingdom and the government's refusal to pay it compensation, Reuters reported. The privately owned airline, launched in 2008, has four planes and was flying to about a dozen destinations in the Middle East and south Asia. It struggled to compete with Bahrain's larger flag carrier, Gulf Air, and low-cost airlines in the region.