Headlines

Mergers in Europe's fragmented banking sector are necessary to make the sector more resilient as the euro zone seeks to protect itself from future crises, France's finance minister told Reuters in an interview, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Bruno Le Maire, who joined President Emmanuel Macron's centrist government in 2017 despite coming from the ranks of France's conservative Republicans party, said banking sector consolidation was needed alongside a single regulatory supervisor and more integrated capital markets.

Jet Airways’ creditors have launched a last-ditch attempt to find an investor to bail out the beleaguered Indian airline, which is in severe financial crisis after months of negotiations failed to secure fresh funds, the Financial Times reported. In a statement released on Thursday, a group of lenders said that they intended to follow a bank-led rescue plan and invited expressions of interest to buy a stake in the carrier, setting a short window of April 6-9 for submissions. The lenders warn that if no investor comes forward “other options may be considered”.

The global synchronized economy recovery has turned into a global synchronized economic downturn, a Bloomberg View reported. The outlook seems to be getting bleaker by the day, and major central banks are hinting that they may need to keep monetary policies loose. The European Central Bank has even suggested that it could start buying corporate bonds again. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that because it’s becoming evident that central bankers make for bad capitalists.

Investors who were bold or lucky enough to buy a little-known, opaque and illiquid vestige of one of Europe’s most dramatic bank failures may make a killing. Their good fortune is another odd twist in the wild history of Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International AG, the Austrian lender that nearly collapsed under bad loans piled up in a state-sponsored buying spree in the former Yugoslavia, Bloomberg News reported.

Nissan Motor Co is considering claiming damages against ousted boss Carlos Ghosn over alleged financial misconduct, the automaker's chief executive told shareholders on Monday, adding the scandal would not be fixed overnight. Hiroto Saikawa made the comments at an extraordinary shareholders' meeting in Tokyo, where Ghosn was expected to be voted out as a director, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Debenhams Plc is edging closer to giving lenders control in a move that would thwart efforts by its largest shareholder Mike Ashley to take the reins, Bloomberg News reported. The struggling U.K. retailer is preparing a so-called prepackaged administration because billionaire Ashley’s Sports Direct International Plc hasn’t yet agreed to the lenders’ terms, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified as talks are private. Sports Direct has until Monday to meet their requirements or risk losing its entire stake of about 30 percent.

Steinhoff International Holdings NV pushed back the dates for the publication of audited earnings for 2017 and 2018 after the findings of a forensic probe by PwC made the process more time consuming and complex, Bloomberg News reported. The South African retailer, which almost collapsed amid an accounting scandal in late 2017, is working toward ensuring that all appropriate adjustments are made to valuations and profitability at various subsidiaries, the company said in a statement on Friday. That has slowed down the process considerably.

The Italian government and the European Commission have reached a provisional agreement to reimburse some investors who bought shares in failed banks, an Italian official said, in an unprecedented move that would soften EU rules on bank rescues, Reuters reported. The bail-in rules devised after the last decade’s financial crisis were designed to make any given bank and its creditors - instead of taxpayers - financially responsible if it went bust, with shareholders first in line to pay up.

Creditors led by hedge fund Elliott Management approved on Friday a restructuring plan for bankrupt airline Avianca Brasil, hours after the country’s antitrust regulator announced preemptively that the plan could run afoul of competition laws, Reuters reported. The regulator, known as CADE, said on Friday morning that it could block the plan, which Avianca Brasil hopes could raise some $210 million. The carrier filed for bankruptcy protection in December.

Bank of Ireland may sell portfolios of further problem loans after it completes the offloading of €375 million of non-performing buy-to-let mortgages from its balance sheet through a bond market refinancing, its chief executive said on Thursday. Speaking to members of the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Francesca McDonagh said “We are certainly looking at all options and that could include a sale of portfolios” of loans, as the bank seeks to lower its non-performing loans (NPLs) to about 5 per cent, The Irish Times reported.