Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

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  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen...

Chinese developer misses bond payment, as stress spills beyond Evergrande

 

A mid-size Chinese real estate developer failed to make a $205.7 million payment due to bondholders Tuesday

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Evergrande | China | Real Estate

AP  |  Beijing 

Evergrande
Representative image

A mid-size Chinese developer failed to make a $205.7 million payment due to bondholders Tuesday, adding to the industry's financial strain as one of China's biggest developers tries to avoid defaulting on billions of dollars of debt.

Fantasia Holdings Group announced it missed the payment in a statement issued through the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It gave no explanation but said it had asked for trading of Fantasia shares to be suspended.

Some Chinese developers are struggling to repay debt after regulators tightened limits last year on their use of borrowed money. That is fuelling fears about possible defaults and turmoil in financial markets.

Investors are worried Group might collapse with 2 trillion yuan ($310 billion) of debt. The company has missed at least one payment to bondholders abroad but has yet to be declared in default.

Economists say Beijing can prevent a broader credit crunch if defaults but wants to avoid bailing out the company or its creditors as a warning to other borrowers and lenders to be more disciplined.

Fantasia, valued by the stock market at $415 million, reported a 153 million yuan ($24 million) profit for the first half of 2021 and said revenue rose 18.5% over a year earlier to 10.9 billion yuan ($1.7 billion).

Hundreds of smaller Chinese developers have gone bankrupt since regulators began tightening control over the industry's financing in 2017 amid concern about rising debt and the possible risk of a financial crisis.

In March, another developer, Fortune Land Development Co. said it missed interest and debt payments totalling 5.3 billion yuan ($813.5 million).

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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First Published: Tue, October 05 2021. 14:08 IST
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