Stay informed with the latest in insolvency news and industry updates. We can keep you up to date with insolvency and finance information from around the world.
A restructuring plan at oil-field services giantSchlumbergeris expected to cost more than a billion dollars as the company lays off more workers and further writes down the value of its assets
Schlumberger is aligning its 17 product lines into four divisions and restructuring its global organization around five oil producing areas. The reorganization and other moves are expected to save the company $1.5 billion per year.
Those structural changes and related layoffs are needed to survive the industry downturn but expected to cost the company up to $1.4 billion, Schlumberger CEO Olivier Le Peuch said during a Tuesday morning virtual presentation for the J.P. Morgan 2020 Energy, Power & Renewables Conference.
Developed nations are considering financial support for a plan to relieve African countries of debt payments without triggering default, according to the United Nations committee steering the initiative.
The debt-swap deal would channel payments due this year on international bonds back to the African nations, helping them fight the coronavirus and its economic impact. Investors would be compensated with securities issued by an international organization set up to monitor the use of funds and guaranteed by the central banks of richer nations or bilateral lenders, according to the plan.
We have at least three countries that are interested but were trying to bring them together to form a group, Vera Songwe, the executive se…
The G20 countries issued a communiqu (14 page / 219KB PDF) in April announcing they had agreed on a coordinated debt suspension approach with a common term sheet for the initiative.
Chinas foreign minister Wang Yi confirmed in May that China was pursuing debt relief for developing countries, largely in Africa, through the G20 debt suspension initiative. Last week vice foreign minister Ma Zhaoxu said repayments had been suspended from 77 developing countries.
We will work with other G20 members to implement the debt service suspension initiative to ease Africa’s debt burden. We are also considering further bilateral support for African countries under the greatest strain to help our African brothers and sisters through this difficult ti…
QUEENSLAND should brace itself for waves of corporate insolvencies over the next six months – including one around Christmas – as debt moratoriums put in place during the pandemic shutdown come to an end.
That’s the unsettling view of veteran lawyer David O’Farrell, who has just joined iconic Brisbane law shop McCullough Robertson Lawyers as part of its insolvency and restructuring team.
O’Farrell says the first wave of corporate collapses are likely to come around August when the end of moratoriums on winding up applications and other debt recovery measures end.
Insolvency lawyer David O’Farrell sees wave of insolvencies due to pandemic.
That will come at the same time as the Federal Government’s JobKeeper …
UK government revealed the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill on 20 May. The Bill follows the lead…
Further to our last update on prospective changes to the UK insolvency regime in light of COVID-19, the UK government revealed the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill on 20 May. The Bill follows the lead of several other jurisdictions including the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Spain, Australia and Germany in introducing such emergency measures and includes perhaps some of the most significant reforms to the UK insolvency regime since The Enterprise Act 2002.
The Bill introduces a number of both temporary and permanent changes as follows:
Temporary changes
Wrongful Trading: wrongful trading sanctions are temporarily suspendedfro…
Six years and nine months’ jail for a trip to Bunnings and helping a mate crack open cocaine-filled car parts was “unreasonable and plainly unjust”, NSW appeal judges have ruled.
Biomedical scientist Klyde O’Shaughnessy will be eligible for release in November after his jail term was cut by 40 per cent this week.
He successfully argued his sentence for attempting to possess 5.4kg of cocaine in November 2017 was manifestly excessive, given he had no idea of the plan until he met with his friend the day they were both arrested in Sydney.
The friend, James Lindsay Willesee, arranged for the delivery of two drive shafts to Pymble Golf Club and then took them to his Freshwater home.
Not long after, police watched O’Shaughnessy arrive at …
If the list of key figures in Australian cricket who couldn’t deal with Kevin Roberts had grown so long as to make his position as Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive untenable, it’s unlikely that their discontent will be sated purely by his exit.
After Roberts departed on Tuesday, leaving behind many fractured relationships due to Cricket Australia’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, chairman Earl Eddings is expected to face questions of the board’s own structure when he sits down with state associations and the Australian Cricketers Association (ACA).
In confirming Roberts’ exit on Tuesday, Eddings conceded personal responsibility for communication failings between CA, the states and the players union. Howev…
He once owned some of the most valuable buildings in the world, and built up a portfolio valued at more than 4B (3.6B). But UK property investor Glenn Maud could be declared bankrupt by the end of the month following a judgement in a long-running legal battle against Libyas sovereign wealth fund and fellow entrepreneur Robert Tchenguiz.
In April, Mr Justice Richard Snowden gave a judgement in favour of the Libyan Investment Authority in its legal proceeding to have Maud declared bankrupt over a 17M debt.This month Maud was given until 29 June to lodge a case with the Court of Appeal or face an immediate bankruptcy order.
In his judgement,Snowden described the case, which has been running for more than four years, as labyrinthine….
John Holland, the Australian contractor owned by the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), has announced jobs cuts and a restructuring of its divisions in the wake of a US$40m loss for 2019.
The company has created a major projects division to handle jobs worth more than $1bn, and has hired former Carillion managing director Mark Davies to run it. Davies had been heading the Balfour Beatty/Vinci joint venture building the UKs HS2 rail scheme.
It has also made its infrastructure business a single national organisation, rather than splitting it into separate state-based companies. Meanwhile, it will review its operations in Southeast Asia, close its Singapore office, and concentrate on delivering existing projects rather than …
Under the program the Fed can buy any bonds issued by a company that held an investment grade credit rating even one only a notch above junk status on March 22, when the program was announced. Effectively that means the Fed can buy bonds in the so-called fallen angels, or companies whose bonds have been relegated to junk status after that date.
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Just the announcement of the program worked to thaw a market for high-yield bonds that had been frozen by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. The stress in credit markets has disappeared and spreads and yields have shrunk.
Access to credit has been plentiful, with the Feds own data showing US non-financial debt increasing by more in the first quarter of this year than at any time in…
Men who have accessed their superannuation early during the coronavirus crisis have increased their spending on gambling by almost twice as much as women, new data shows.
Women spent nearly one-fifth more than men on food and clothing, and 25 per cent extra on utility bills.
They also spent twice as much as men on beauty and personal care products, according to analysis by credit bureau illion and economic consultants AlphaBeta.
Based on the anonymised banking transactions of 13,000 people who have taken advantage of the early super access scheme, the data comes just two weeks after a similar report found members had spent 64 per cent of withdrawals on non-essentials such as clothing, alcohol and gambling.
