Noble chases senior creditors for a deal before $379m bond due on 20 March

The bond has no grace period unlike the 2022 coupon that Noble decided to drop on Monday.

According to Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, nearly a year after a shock trading loss sent it spiralling toward collapse, Noble Group Limited is chasing a group of senior creditors for a deal before a $379m bond maturity on 20 March.

Noble previously failed to pay a coupon on its 2022 bond that was due on Friday. Whilst that has a 30-day grace period, the $379m bond maturity does not.

The March 20 bond maturity is shaping up to be the denouement of a drama that began more than three years ago when then-unknown Iceberg Research started publishing critiques of Noble’s accounting. Since then, the company has shrunk to a shadow of its former self, battered by trading losses and massive write-downs.

"The clock is really ticking," said Jean-Francois Lambert, a consultant and former head of commodity trade finance at HSBC Holdings Plc. "The domino effect of default would be like a tsunami."

Read the full report here.