Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc set aside a further 3.1 billion pounds ($5.1 billion) to cover legal and compensation claims, putting Britain’s biggest bailed-out lender on track to post its largest pretax loss since 2008, Bloomberg News reported. The provision includes 1.9 billion pounds for lawsuits and fines tied mostly to the sale of $91 billion of mortgage-backed securities from 2005 to 2007, according to the lender. It follows agreements Deutsche Bank AG, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and UBS AG struck with U.S.

Three junior holders and a committee representing senior bondholders of Punch Taverns' securitised debt said on Monday morning they would reject a proposed restructuring at an investor meeting scheduled to take place on February 14, Reuters reported. In its restructuring proposal launched on January 15, the company threatened to default if investors fail to agree to the terms put forward that would cut debt from GBP2.3bn to GBP1.83bn and net leverage from 11 to 8.7 times Ebitda.

Since the insolvency of metallurgical company Liepajas metalurgs was declared this past November, EUR 1.3 million has already been spent in maintaining the company and its equipment, the company's insolvency administrator Haralds Velmers said, The Baltic Course reported. Velmers points out that most of the money went to paying electricity and gas bills, as well as paying salaries for essential personnel. ''Up until a few days ago, we were quite happy with the situation, as we were able to save a bit on our heating bill due to the unseasonably warm weather,'' he said.

Russian state lender Sberbank is negotiating with loss-making aluminium group Rusal on a debt restructuring deal to help the company weather low aluminium prices, two banking sources told Reuters on Friday. United Company Rusal, the world's biggest producer of the metal used in transport and packaging, has been hit by weak aluminium prices and its heavy net debt levels of around $10 billion. "The model has been broadly agreed... We cannot afford the world's largest producer to fail," one of the sources said. Rusal declined to comment. Sberbank could not be reached for immediate comment.

Mario Draghi has signalled that he would be prepared for the European Central Bank to fight deflation in Europe by buying packages of bank loans to households and companies, the Financial Times reported. Such a move would mark a sharp departure from traditional quantitative easing and provide a potential fix to the collapse in bank lending in the currency bloc.

German wind park group Prokon's assets and profit-participation rights are attracting possible buyers after it declared insolvency earlier this week. Capital Stage, a Hamburg-based operator of wind and solar parks, is interested in buying some of Prokon's wind parks, a company spokesman said on Friday. "The acquisition of existing parks is part of our business," he said, adding that the group would wait until insolvency proceedings were opened to get in touch with the administrator.

Germany's justice minister has promised tougher regulation of niche investment products after the insolvency of Prokon, a wind park group that lured investors with aggressive ad campaigns on prime-time television, in buses and commuter trains, Reuters reported. The company of 1,300, which operates 50 wind parks in Germany and Poland, had raised 1.4 billion euros ($1.9 billion) by touting profit-participation rights and promises of returns of at least 6 percent a year. Consumer groups had long warned that the company, founded in 1995, was not spelling out the risks to investors.

German wind park group Prokon, which had raised 1.4 billion euros ($1.9 billion) mainly from retail investors, has filed for insolvency, a court in the north German town of Itzehoe saidon Wednesday, Reuters reported. An administrator has been appointed for Prokon Regenerative Energien GmbH, the court said in a statement. The company, which operates 50 wind parks in Germany and Poland and employs roughly 1,300 staff, had raised money by selling so-called profit-participation certificates which were marketed to investors through advertising campaigns on German prime-time television.

Hedge funds and other creditors in Iceland’s failed banks are trying to get a response from the nation’s authorities on the status of their claims as the government considers amending the bankruptcy law, Bloomberg News reported. More than five years after Iceland’s biggest banks defaulted on $85 billion, the nation has yet to arrive at an agreement with creditors on how to settle their claims. At stake for Iceland is its financial stability as authorities search for a solution that doesn’t trigger a krona sell-off just as the island tries to scale back capital controls.

The author of a report into state-backed Royal Bank of Scotland's lending to small businesses said he found no evidence of the bank engineering companies into default, Reuters reported. Andrew Large, who was commissioned by RBS last year to conduct the review, said he hadn't found anything to back up accusations made in a separate report by government adviser Lawrence Tomlinson. However, he did say there was an "element of plausibility" behind them.