Headlines

A failed bidder for Portugal's third-largest lender Novo Banco has asked its lawyers to block the 1 billion euro (836.70 billion pounds) sale to U.S. fund Lone Star and told the central bank it should relaunch the bidding. London-based financial firm Aethel Partners complained to the Bank of Portugal this week in a document viewed by Reuters. It said the central bank had not properly considered its 3.8 billion euro bid when it awarded Novo Banco to Lone Star last month.

Venezuela was once among the most lucrative markets in Latin America for foreign businesses, a country oozing in oil and blessed with an emerging middle class hungry for everything modern, from new cars to snug-fitting disposable diapers. But the good times are long gone, and on Thursday, General Motors became the latest in a wave of international companies that have shut their doors voluntarily or under duress, the International New York Times reported. In G.M.’s case, the Venezuelan authorities seized the company’s local vehicle assembly plant.

Alitalia employees are voting on whether to accept a government-brokered deal to save Italy's flagship airline from bankruptcy, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. Some 12,500 Alitalia workers began voting Thursday on a package that eased steep cuts sought by parent Etihad Airways, and which will open 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion) in investment to keep the airline afloat. Voting runs through Tuesday.

Declining borrowing costs in Brazil will help local companies cut their debt and speed up refinancing efforts with creditors, even if they fail to jump-start economic growth in the short run, Moody's Investors Service said in a report on Wednesday. The central bank's rate-reduction cycle should have the immediate effect of alleviating the burden of companies struggling with large chunks of real-denominated debt, the report said. Brazilian companies pay the highest borrowing costs among the world's major economies, Reuters reported.

Turkey’s government plans to restructure nearly $20 billion in unpaid taxes, the second such move in a year, as it seeks to boost revenue and stimulate growth, Bloomberg News reported. A bill sent to parliament on Tuesday would allow taxpayers to repay existing debt to state institutions over a period of three years starting July, and receive discounts for paying upfront, Finance Minister Naci Agbal said in an interview with Bloomberg HT television in Ankara on Wednesday. The amount covered by the measure is at least 73 billion liras, Agbal said.

Mozambique increased minimum pay levels for workers including government employees, even as the International Monetary Fund urged the country to keep its wage bill under control amid a debt crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Public workers’ minimum wages will rise by 21 percent, Labor Minister Vitoria Diogo said Tuesday after a cabinet meeting in the capital, Maputo. The increase is higher than that for employees in the private sector including banking, construction and manufacturing, and slightly less than inflation, which accelerated to 21.57 percent in March.

Argentinian President Mauricio Macri’s reform efforts have won approval from the world’s biggest emerging-market bond investor, Bloomberg News reported. Franklin Templeton Chief Investment Officer Michael Hasenstab boosted holdings in Argentina in the $40.4 billion Templeton Global Bond Fund that he runs to 4.5 percent in the first quarter. The investment has propelled the Latin American country to the sixth spot in the fund’s country holdings. Hasenstab was encouraged by reform efforts from Argentina’s new president, he said in a research note published in January.

Tata Steel has offered to make a one-off payment of £520m into its UK pension scheme, in its latest effort to make a clean break from its large British retirement liabilities, the Financial Times reported. The Indian steelmaker has put the offer to the trustees of the UK scheme — called British Steel Pension Scheme — as part of moves by Tata to try to hive off the retirement fund. The proposed £520m payment into the BSPS is intended to release a guarantee the scheme holds over some of Tata’s Dutch assets.

The German government believes an interest rate increase by the European Central Bank (ECB) would help to reduce Germany's often-criticised export surplus, the Funke Mediengruppe newspaper chain reported Wednesday. The newspaper cited an eight-page paper prepared by the German finance and economics ministries which Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble plans to present at the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund later this week, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Schaeuble is a longtime critic of the ECB's current ultra-low interest rate policy.

China’s shadow banking is back in full swing, an unintended side effect of the government’s campaign against financial leverage, which has curbed traditional lending and squeezed bond financing. Data from the central bank Friday showed that off-balance sheet lending surged 754 billion yuan ($109 billion) in March, taking the first quarter’s total increase to a record 2.05 trillion yuan, Bloomberg News reported.