Headlines

The costs of the receivership for Treasury Holdings' main Spencer Dock firm now total over €15.5m, Independent.ie reported. That is according to the latest receivers' extract lodged with the Companies Office for the former Johnny Ronan company. The figures show that the costs of the receivership, made up of professional, management and receiver fees concerning the six year long receivership of the Treasury Holdings's firm, now total €15.5m.

Chad signed a deal with Glencore Plc to restructure more than $1 billion in debt in an agreement that will help the African nation to avoid a financial crunch, Bloomberg News reported. The review was signed on Wednesday and is a “good outcome” for Chad, Guillaume Foucault, a spokesman for the country’s national oil company, said by phone from Paris. Under the terms of the agreement, the loan’s maturity is extended to 12 years while Chad will receive a grace period of two years, said Foucault.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel say they want to make the common currency area more resilient and adaptable, but their two countries have traditionally disagreed over how that should be achieved, Bloomberg News reported. Can crack economists from the relevant countries solve the problem for them? They are giving it a shot -- but building a European consensus will be hard. A month ago, a group of 14 French and German economists co-authored a detailed proposal to bridge the policy differences between the two countries.

South Korea’s household debt rose to a new record in 2017, even as the government tightened lending terms to cool the property market. Household debt including credit purchases rose to 1,450.9 trillion won ($1.3 trillion) at the end of December, up 8.1 percent from the previous year, according to a statement from the Bank of Korea. While the pace of increase remained fast, it was the slowest in three years, Bloomberg News reported.

The Netherlands is demanding that private investors face mandatory debt writedowns in future eurozone bailouts, a position that will fuel arguments as countries spar over the next phase of integration in the single currency bloc. Wopke Hoekstra, the Dutch finance minister, said imposing haircuts on private creditors was “essential” to protect eurozone taxpayers from paying to rescue bankrupt governments and introduce greater market discipline on high debt economies, the Financial Times reported. “It is essential if things go wrong.

HNA Group, the heavily leveraged Chinese conglomerate, has turned to private equity company Pacific Alliance Group for finance amid pressure to raise cash and cut its debt, the Financial Times reported. Hainan-based HNA, which started as an airline company before expanding into finance, announced on Wednesday that it had pledged about 1.4bn of shares — amounting to HK$3.1bn ($396m) — from one of its subsidiaries, to borrow from privately owned PAG Holdings.

British lawmakers on Tuesday published in full a confidential report detailing Royal Bank of Scotland's mistreatment of struggling businesses during and after the financial crisis, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. "The findings in the report are disgraceful," Nicky Morgan, chair of the cross-party Treasury Select Committee, said. The TSC said in a statement it had agreed to publish immediately the final, unredacted report, which contains the findings of an inquiry into RBS's then-restructuring unit GRG.

ArcelorMittal and Russia’s state-controlled VTB Group have hit a fresh snag in their pursuit of Essar Steel India Ltd., an insolvent producer that could fetch at least $6 billion, Bloomberg News reported. Advisers evaluating the offers for Essar Steel are recommending that all the bids be disqualified, according to people with knowledge of the matter. A committee of Essar Steel lenders will meet later this week to discuss the eligibility of the proposals, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.

India’s central bank is reviewing its process for allowing companies to raise money overseas due to concern that any increase in rupee volatility may hurt borrowers’ ability to repay debt, a person familiar with the matter said. The Reserve Bank of India is spending more time scrutinizing companies’ hedging practices, vetting borrowers more closely to prepare for any financial-market fallout from an increase in U.S. interest rates, the person said, asking not to be named as the matter is private, Bloomberg News reported.

HSBC has warned that it could pay at least $1.5bn in penalties over alleged tax evasion and money laundering at its Swiss private bank, casting a shadow over Stuart Gulliver’s final day as chief executive, the Financial Times reported. The estimate underlines how the outgoing HSBC boss has struggled to get to grips with the string of scandals thrown up by a number of ill-judged acquisitions dating back to before he took over in 2011. Mr Gulliver was due to hand control of the bank at midnight on Tuesday UK time to John Flint, HSBC’s former global head of retail banking.