The trial of four senior bankers has heard that Irish Life and Permanent stopped a €3 billion transfer from Anglo in December 2008 because of a fear over “reputational damage”, the Irish Times reported. Former Irish Life and Permanent (ILP) CEO Denis Casey and Anglo’s former head of finance Willie McAteer and two others are accused of conspiring to mislead investors by using interbank loans to make Anglo appear €7.2 billion more valuable than it was. Mr McAteer (65) of Greenrath, Tipperary Town, Co.

A number of developer Seamus Ross’s Menolly Homes group companies look set to be placed in liquidation at a creditors’ meetings today, the Irish Times reported. Mr Ross was one of the most active housebuilders in Dublin, through the Menolly Homes group, over the last decade. Last December he became one of the well-known developers to exit Nama when Cardinal Capital refinanced the final part of his group’s debts.

The president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, says that some eurozone banks “face challenges” but that the system is more resilient because of stronger oversight after the global financial crisis, the International New York Times reported. Mr.

Russia's Gazprombank will receive Mechel's Elga coal project in exchange of paying off some of the coal and steel company's debt to Sberbank, according to preliminary debt restructuring deal, two banking sources told Reuters. The agreement is a part of a wider restructuring process, announced by Mechel this month, which involves Sberbank, Gazprombank, VTB and a consortium of international lenders. The restructuring process, if approved by Mechel's shareholders next month, will mark the end of two years of talks between the company and creditors.

Irish homeowners continue to pay above the odds for their mortgage borrowings and are being under-compensated for their deposits, new figures from the Central Bank show. Yes, despite another fall in variable mortgage rates in December, Irish homeowners are paying an average new business rate of 3.76 per cent on their mortgage. This compares with an average rate for the Euro area of just 1.99 per cent, with homeowners in Luxembourg for example, paying an average rate of just 1.76 per cent.

The rout in European financial markets last week was a watershed event. What we witnessed was not necessarily the beginnings of a bear market in equities or an uncertain harbinger of a future recession. What we saw — at least here in Europe — is the return of the financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. Version 2.0 of the eurozone crisis may look less frightening than the original in some respects but it is worse in others. The bond yields are not quite as high as they were then. The eurozone now has a rescue umbrella in place. The banks have lower levels of leverage.

Since the financial crisis, it has been gospel for many investors that some combination of actions by central banks — bond buying, bold promises or flirtations with negative interest rates — would be enough to keep the global economy out of recession, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported.

The cost of insuring Deutsche Bank debt against default leapt on Thursday, while costs for other European banks also climbed as their shares plunged to multi-year lows, Reuters reported. Credit default swaps (CDS), used to insure debt, now imply a 24.5 percent probability that Germany's biggest bank will default on its subordinated, or junior, debt, according to data provider Markit, while on senior debt the probability has risen to 17 percent.

Irish household debt continued to fall in the third quarter of 2015, reaching its lowest level since the early months of 2006, new data from the Central Bank has revealed. The figures showed debt declined to €151.2 billion, or €32,614 per capita, for the three month period, down €2.1 billion or 1.3 per cent overall from the preceding quarter, the Irish Times reported. This was partly due to continued repayments, write-offs and reclassifications, with repayments at their lowest level since the first quarter of 2010.

Ukraine has agreed a restructuring deal with Russia's Sberbank on $367.4 million of state-guaranteed debt, the government said in an online statement on Thursday, the Daily Mail reported on a Reuters story. The deal included a 25 percent writedown and maturity extensions to Sept. 1, 2019, it said. The debt of state-owned firms, Ukravtodor and Yuzhnoye State Design Office, was included in the external loans that Ukraine has sought to restructure under a $40 billion bailout programme coordinated by the International Monetary Fund.