The troubled More Than insurer RSA signalled another burst of pain ahead on the dividend yesterday as it prepares to strengthen its finances following "completely unacceptable" losses in Ireland, The Independent reported. A review of its Irish business by the accountancy firms PwC and KPMG found that "inappropriate collaboration" between the subsidiary's top executives undermined accounting controls, but said the problems were confined to Ireland. The problems were uncovered in November, forcing RSA to pump £200m into the business.

Greece’s finance minister says his government’s shrinking parliamentary majority has made it increasingly difficult to pass tough economic reform measures and called on the “troika” of international bailout lenders to be more realistic in its demands of Athens. Yannis Stournaras, who has been waging a four-month battle with bailout monitors over whether Greece is living up to the terms of its €172bn international rescue, said while Athens can continue to implement existing reforms – including better tax collection – ambitions for major legislative measures may need to be scaled back.

The State has a long way to go in its battle against unemployment, despite a 28,000 fall in the numbers signing on last year, Taoiseach Enda Kenny warned yesterday, the Irish Times reported. Figures published by the Central Statistics Office show the numbers on the Live Register fell by 3,300 on a seasonally adjusted basis in December to 402,800 from 406,100 in November, a month-on-month reduction of 0.1 per cent.

As Spain's economy begins to recover from a near-fatal crisis, Latin American companies and entrepreneurs are ahead of the pack in gaining a foothold from which they can grab a share of the spoils, Reuters reported. Mexicans, Venezuelans and others have moved into areas such as banking, travel, food and other consumer-orientated sectors. Investors from Spain's former colonies are also snapping up financially strained firms in "the Mother County" in need of liquidity boosts.

GSO Capital Partners LP and Canyon Capital Partners LLC agreed to allow Codere SA to miss a loan repayment deadline as the Spanish gaming company continues talks to restructure 1.1 billion euros ($1.5 billion) of debt, Bloomberg News reported. The company has been given 30 days to repay 127.1 million euros of loans, Madrid-based Codere said in a statement. If the company manages to reach an agreement with creditors within the next month, the loan will be extended until April 15, the company said.

Mothercare suffered a humiliating setback to its plans for a turnaround in its UK business as the baby and childrenswear business issued a shock profit warning, The Independent reported. Its directors admitted sales in the run up to Christmas had been poor with fewer customers coming through its doors, disappointing online sales and heavy discounting affecting the bottom line.

The entire financial services industry should comply with new stricter rules governing the appointment of banking executives and directors, the City watchdog said on Tuesday as it admitted it had fallen short in vetting senior staff at the Co-operative Bank, the Financial Times reported. The backing for a drastic expansion of the new “senior persons regime” which would affect tens of thousands of senior City employees came as the regulator testified over the scandal at the Co-op Bank whose disgraced former chairman, Paul Flowers, was filmed buying illegal drugs.

Dutch smelter Aluminium Delfzijl (Aldel) has applied for bankruptcy after failing to negotiate an energy deal, the company said on its website, the latest victim in a market plagued by oversupply and falling prices, Reuters reported. Aldel, bought by global industrial commodities company Klesch Group in 2009, applied for bankruptcy in a Dutch court on Dec. 30 and had expected a court decision on the same day, it said on its website. Spokespeople for Adel and Klesch Group were not immediately available for comment.

2,380 insolvency cases against individuals and legal entities were launched in Latvia in 2013, 125 cases more than in 2012 and 723 cases more than in 2011, according to the Register of Enterprises' Lursoft data, cites LETA/Nozare.lv. Nevertheless, the number of insolvency cases in 2013 did not reach the record-high figure of 2010, when 2,814 insolvency cases were opened. The number of legal protection processes and extra-judicial legal protection processes also rose in 2013.

The head of the eurozone's bailout fund, Klaus Regling has ruled out the possibility of a restructuring of Greek debt, media outlet EU Observer reported on Tuesday. Speaking to Germany's Spiegel magazine, Regling - who heads the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), Greece's largest creditor with 133 billion euros in 30-year loans already disbursed at an interest rate of 1.5 percent - is quoted as saying "there will be no debt restructuring." "The interest on these loans was deferred for the next 10 years.