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South African Finance Minister Tito Mboweni again expressed his doubts about the need for a national airline less than a month after agreeing to find the cash for a 10.5 billion rand ($685 million) bailout of the stricken carrier, Bloomberg News reported. In a series of late-night tweets, Mboweni asked his near 1 million followers whether the country requires state-owned South African Airways or whether a private company should be given the chance to come in and fill the gap left by its demise. Mboweni has long been an opponent of using state funds to bail out SAA, which has been in bankruptcy protection for almost a year and hasn’t flown a commercial flight since the start of South Africa’s coronavirus lockdown in March. He has clashed with Pravin Gordhan, the public enterprises minister, who has insisted SAA can be restructured, revived and partly sold to a private bidder.

Satellite megaconstellation company OneWeb should emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy “any day now,” a company executive said Nov. 18, its business plan validated by a growing demand for broadband connectivity, SpaceNews.com reported. During a Washington Space Business Roundtable webinar, Ruth Pritchard-Kelly, vice president for regulatory affairs at OneWeb, said that the company was wrapping up paperwork to allow it to formally exit the bankruptcy protection it filed for in March. A federal court approved last month the sale of the company to an ownership group led by Bharti Global and the British government. Since the Oct. 2 decision by a federal court approving the sale, OneWeb has been wrapping up paperwork to close the sale and formally exit chapter 11. That included an Oct. 27 approval by the Federal Communications Commission to transfer OneWeb’s satellite and ground station licenses to its new owners. OneWeb is preparing to resume satellite launches. The company this week flew a set of 36 satellites from its factory near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia. Those satellites will launch on a Soyuz rocket there in December as part of a revised launch contract with Arianespace announced in September.

Norwegian Air said yesterday that it has asked an Irish court to oversee a restructuring of its massive debt as it seeks to stave off collapse amid the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reported. Norway’s government last week rejected the airline’s plea for another injection of state funds, and the company said the following day it was at risk of having to halt operations in early 2021 unless it got access to more cash. “The main purpose here is to come out of this process quite shortly with a company that is ‘investable’, where we can be attractive again for investors,” Chief Financial Officer Geir Karlsen told Reuters. The company has opted for an Irish process since its aircraft assets are held in Ireland. After growing rapidly to become Europe’s third-largest low-cost airline and the biggest foreign carrier serving New York and other major U.S. cities, Norwegian’s debt and liabilities stood at 66.8 billion crowns ($7.4 billion) at the end of September. Read more. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic grinding international travel to a halt, experts on an online panel today at ABI’s International Insolvency Forum will provide their insights into distressed non-U.S. airlines filing for chapter 11 protection, and how their cases may differ from domestic carriers. Click here to register. 

AirAsia Japan Co. has filed for bankruptcy with the Tokyo District Court after flagging last month it would cease operations in the country, as the coronavirus pandemic that’s wiped out travel globally took its toll, Bloomberg News reported. The arm of Malaysia’s AirAsia Group Bhd. then received a provisional administration order from the court today. “Given AirAsia Japan’s current financial position, we regret to inform that AirAsia Japan is currently unable to settle the outstanding refunds,” the company said. AirAsia, which reported its largest loss on record in the second quarter ended June 30, has been under immense pressure this year as Covid-19 roils the aviation industry. The low-cost airline has also stopped funding its Indian affiliate, leaving the future of AirAsia India Ltd. largely dependent on its majority shareholder, Indian conglomerate Tata Group. Long-haul budget arm, AirAsia X Bhd., isn’t faring much better, earlier this month submitting a new debt restructuring proposal to creditors. AirAsia Japan had already canceled all flights, including one between Nagoya and Taipei. Services operated to Japan by AirAsia’s other carriers in places like Thailand and the Philippines won’t be affected. International services to Japan from Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines will resume as travel restrictions are eased and borders reopen, the airline said today. Read more. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic grinding international travel to a halt, experts on an online panel at ABI’s International Insolvency Forum set for Nov. 18-20 will provide their insights into distressed non-U.S. airlines filing for chapter 11 protection, and how their cases may differ from domestic carriers. Click here to register. 

According to Bloomberg Law dockets, through Oct. 31 alone, chapter 15 filings are up a whopping 68 percent over total 2019 filings. In contrast, total U.S. non-consumer bankruptcy filings through the close of third quarter of 2020 are slightly down — about 2.5 percent, compared to the same time period in 2019. A look at these raw numbers would lead us to believe that while our economy is rebounding, other countries are foundering miserably. But that is not necessarily the case, according to the commentary. As the pandemic and economic uncertainty linger, companies will continue to experience hardship, and some will file insolvency proceedings in their respective countries. A portion of those insolvent companies that have creditor exposure or assets in the U.S. and that are well-positioned enough to afford multiple simultaneous bankruptcies will undoubtedly file chapter 15 here. Although more than 40 countries have implemented some form of the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency (the “Model Law”), the law upon which chapter 15 is based, only 20 countries are represented in the list of foreign proceeding venues for 2020. At the top of the list is Canada with 127 cases through October 31. Canadian debtors account for more than half of the chapter 15 cases filed in the United States. Even without the June filing of Cirque de Soleil and its more than 40 related entities, Canada would still lead the list, with more than 80 other cases originating in the country so far in 2020. Thanks to the Virgin Atlantic Airways bankruptcy and its 30-plus co-debtors, Australian debtors come in at No. 2. It is noteworthy that, were it not for the airline cases, Australia would barely have cracked the top 10, with only two cases.

Mexican carrier Grupo Aeromexico will continue to reactivate travel destinations throughout next year, an executive told Reuters yesterday, adding that there is still much uncertainty stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. The country’s largest carrier filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a U.S. court earlier this year and has since tried to shore up its finances. “We’ll continue to reactivate but a lot will depend on possible resurgences of the virus as well as on the vaccine,” Giancarlo Mulinelli, the carrier’s vice president of global sales, said in an interview. Mulinelli forecast that the industry, one of the worst-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, would probably not make a full recovery before 2022. Read more.

With the COVID-19 pandemic grinding international travel to a halt, experts on an online panel at ABI’s International Insolvency Forum set for Nov. 18-20 will provide their insights into distressed non-U.S. airlines filing for chapter 11 protection, and how their cases may differ from domestic carriers. Click here to register. 

The number of insolvency filings in Canada jumped in September to the highest since the pandemic began, in what may be the first sign of long-anticipated strains in household finances from the crisis, Bloomberg News reported. The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada reported 7,658 consumer insolvency filings, up 18.5 percent from August. That’s the biggest monthly increase since 2017, and the most since March when widespread lockdowns were imposed to control the spread of COVID-19. Despite the one-month increase, insolvencies remain at historically low levels — which has been the case for most of 2020 as households continue to benefit from government support measures and payment deferrals from creditors. September filings are still down 36 percent from the same month in 2019. But the pick-up may suggest that reprieve is waning. There were still 1.3 million Canadian workers in September without jobs or working significantly fewer hours because of the pandemic. Filings rose 25 percent on the month in Quebec, and 15 percent in Ontario, though they are still significantly below year-earlier levels in both provinces.