Headlines

China’s premier said today that his government would respond to an economic slowdown by cutting taxes, easing burdens on the private sector and giving markets a bigger role, Keith Bradsher and Chris Buckley of the NYT write. 2019 is a “crucial year” for China’s economy, Premier Li Keqiang, the second-ranking official in the country after President Xi Jinping, said at the opening of the National People’s Congress in Beijing this morning.

Greece drew strong demand on Tuesday for its first 10-year bond issue since plunging into a debt crisis nine years ago, in a clear vote of confidence from markets in its economic revival days after securing a two-notch ratings upgrade, the Irish Times reported. It raised €2.5 billion from a sale that drew offers worth €11.8 billion, it said in a regulatory filing. The yield was set at 3.9 per cent, a slim premium judged by the secondary yields of outstanding Greek bonds and down from initial guidance of 4.125 per cent. The coupon was 3.875 per cent.

Talks between British Prime Minister Theresa May’s top government lawyer and European Union negotiators to win concessions from the bloc on Brexit ended with no agreement in Brussels on Tuesday, Reuters reported. May has sent Attorney General Geoffrey Cox to seek changes to her deal in a last-ditch bid to get it through parliament and smooth Britain’s departure from the European Union. The talks between Cox, Britain’s Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay and the EU’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier ended with no agreement after more than three hours on Tuesday.

Mrs Brown’s Boys actor Daniel O’Carroll was among 73 individuals and firms who made settlements in the latest list of tax defaulters. Other actors from the show were last year linked to an offshore tax structure that helped them avoid hundreds of thousands of euro in tax. Details of the structure, which involved trusts in the Seychelles and Mauritius, emerged as part of the so-called Paradise Papers. The latest tax defaulters’ list, published on Tuesday by Revenue, provides details of 73 taxpayers who have made settlements totalling €12.7 million in the final quarter of last year.

The Reserve Bank's proposals to double minimum bank equity levels will cost New Zealand's economy $1.5-to-$2 billion a year without making banks much safer, according to former long-serving central bank official Ian Harrison, The New Zealand Herald reported. Worse, he says the bank's decision to base its policy on ensuring that bank collapses occur only once in every 200 years happened at the last minute when it realised that its initial target of limiting bank collapses to once in every 100 years would have meant New Zealand banks already had sufficient capital to meet that test.

The head of SNC-Lavalin told the Canadian government it had to change its anti-corruption rules “as expeditiously as possible” in a 2017 letter to the minister in charge of procurement, just as her department was helping oversee public consultations on lighter punishments for corporate misconduct, The Globe and Mail reported. SNC-Lavalin chief executive Neil Bruce wrote to Public Services Minister Carla Qualtrough on Oct. 13, 2017, and sent copies of his message to seven other senior cabinet ministers. Mr.

A group of bondholders of construction conglomerate Odebrecht SA proposed on Monday the restructuring of $3 billion in bonds requiring new collateral and a cash infusion to allow a four-year extension on maturities. In a proposal publicized by the bondholders advisers, Rothschild & Co and law firms Davis Polk and Pinheiro Neto, bondholders require payment with no discount from the bonds’ face value.

Mozambique will continue with restructuring talks over $2 billion of defaulted loans, the Ministry of Finance said, even as an international scandal around the debt intensifies, Bloomberg News reported. The $2 billion comprises three loans, one of which was converted into a eurobond, and another two that are guaranteed by the state.

German taxpayers could be left more than 600 million euros ($680 million) out of pocket in outstanding credit to Airbus for developing the A380 superjumbo, the Funke Mediengruppe will report on Monday citing an economy ministry statement, excerpts approved for release showed. Berlin loaned Airbus 942 million euros in 2002 in connection with the A380’s development, of which only a third has been repaid, the media group cited the statement as saying.

Creditors of Odebrecht SA’s engineering and construction division holding more than $1 billion of the Brazilian company’s bonds said they have proposed a debt restructuring, including a four-year extension of maturity, Bloomberg News reported. Odebrecht hasn’t responded yet to the proposal, which was presented on Wednesday, the creditor group said in a statement. The company was said in December to be running out of collateral it can pledge to creditors of its scandal-plagued construction unit.