Singapore

A rare public protest in Singapore on Saturday underscored mounting anger among investors set to suffer sharp losses in one of the country’s highest-profile corporate debt restructurings, Bloomberg News reported. The catastrophic slump of the once-vaunted water and power company, Hyflux Ltd., has stunned debtholders, who stand to lose about 90 percent. About 400 to 500 of those individual investors gathered in a downtown park known as the Speaker’s Corner on Saturday, carrying placards and posters.

An Indonesian white knight, whose proposed investment in Hyflux is crucial for the beleaguered water treatment company’s rescue, said on Thursday that conditions for a deal to restructure the firm had not been met, Reuters reported. In October, SM Investments (SMI), a consortium of Indonesia’s Salim Group and Medco Group, had agreed to acquire 60 percent of Hyflux for S$400 million ($290 million) and also give it a loan of S$130 million.

Embattled Singapore water treatment company Hyflux Ltd.’s survival is looking shakier as disagreements with its rescuer deepen, Bloomberg News reported. Hyflux said in a filing that it disputes certain assertions by SM Investments, the consortium of Indonesian businessmen that had agreed last year to take a majority stake in the firm. At the same time, SM Investments is disagreeing with some terms of the restructuring plan put forward by Hyflux, the filing shows. The disputes heighten the drama of the catastrophic slump of the once-vaunted water and power company.

Emotions are running high among some Hyflux Ltd. retail investors who stand to lose almost everything in the collapse of Singapore’s once much vaunted water-treatment company, Bloomberg News reported. The frustration has prompted some of them to organize a protest on March 30 over a steep haircut imposed by the company under its S$2.8 billion ($2.1 billion) debt restructuring plan. The Business Times published a letter from a reader calling on Singapore to nationalize the plant, saying Hyflux may be worth as much as a commodity trader that got government support in 2014.

Cracks are showing in Southeast Asia’s credit markets as struggling companies in troubled industries seek to repair their balance sheets, according to Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP, which manages the largest network of corporate lawyers in the region, Bloomberg News reported. The law firm, which has handled local units of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and MF Global Inc. in their bankruptcy cases, said a slowing Chinese economy and more risk aversion among alternative capital providers will make it more challenging for some companies to meet maturing obligations.

The catastrophic slump of Singapore’s much-vaunted water and power company, Hyflux Ltd., has stunned 34,000 retail investors who were lured by the promise of a 6 percent annual return forever from a company that seemed to have a gold seal of government approval, Bloomberg News reported. At the heart of the debacle is Tuaspring, a desalination and power plant that cost S$1.1 billion ($809 million) and was heralded as one of the “national taps” for an island that had long depended on importing water and harvesting rainwater for survival.

Singapore’s troubled water treatment company Hyflux Ltd., formerly celebrated as a hallmark of entrepreneurship in better times, is set for a humbling week, Bloomberg News reported. Creditors are due to file proof by Friday of the obligations that Hyflux owes them, putting the company’s S$2.7 billion ($2 billion) unsecured debt load under an even brighter spotlight. The firm this month unveiled a proposal to impose 75 to 90 percent haircuts on unsecured creditors, following a tumble triggered by an ill-timed expansion into energy in recent years.

Talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. The looming insolvency of once-mighty commodities trader Noble Group Ltd. is an overdue reckoning for a company that has long sailed close to the wind, a Bloomberg View reported. More than that, though, it’s a black mark against the city-state where it’s been listed since 1997: Singapore. Noble has spent the past year squirming through an attempted restructuring to keep it from bankruptcy, hampered by its money-losing operating business and years of squandered trust.

Singaporean regulators investigating Noble Group Ltd. have focused their questions so far on the company’s use of mark-to-market accounting, according to people familiar with the matter. The struggling commodity trader was thrown into fresh crisis last week after Singapore announced a three-agency probe into Noble’s accounts just days before a marathon $3.5 billion debt restructuring was due to complete, Bloomberg News reported. On Sunday, Noble said it would delay the deadline for that deal to Dec.

Noble Group Ltd. extended the deadline for its marathon restructuring until Dec. 11 to address regulators’ concerns, a week after Singaporean authorities began an investigation into the embattled commodity trader’s finances, Bloomberg News reported. The company on Sunday moved the deadline for the $3.5 billion debt restructuring back by two weeks. Noble said that Singapore’s Securities Industry Council extended a key waiver to allow the deadline to be pushed back.