Bill Zastrow owns $240,000 of General Motors bonds. He’s not happy, but, as he told Reuters’ Kevin Krolicki, “We were getting the Marie Antoinette haircut and now it looks like it’s a few inches higher.”

The best guess is that his holding is now worth about $22,000, not far away from the sum he used to get in annual interest, but that’s better than the zero-to-$12,000 which the earlier offer to bondholders implied.

Ineos Group, popularly described as Britain’s largest private company, has escaped the hangman’s noose again. For the second time, a sufficient majority of the 230 banks to which it owes 7.5 billion euros have granted it a stay of execution.

  Last month, the 7.875 per cent 2016 bond was trading at 7 per cent of face value, but since then the price has jumped to 28. Its other debt has also risen strongly.