Headlines

Odebrecht Óleo & Gás SA, the offshore oil drilling company owned by Brazil's Odebrecht SA, has won temporary relief from investors despite pledging to honor interest payments on a bond a week after deadline, Reuters reported. In a Friday statement, the company known as OOG said investors would receive on April 7 an interest payment on the company's 6.75 percent global note due in October 2022 67576GAA5= that was due on March 1. OOG was making use of a so-called 30-day cure period expiring later on Friday to settle the payment.

ABI, the Italian banks’ association, reckons that 80% of the growth of NPLs can be attributed to the civil-justice system (by far the biggest single factor), sluggish economic growth (the next biggest) and taxation, The Economist reported. On average a bankruptcy takes 7.4 years. Only one-quarter of cases are resolved in less than two years. Some last more than two decades. Bad loans have quadrupled in value since 2008, notes Andrea Mignanelli of Cerved, a data provider. But no bank has quadrupled their staff to manage them. Lenders have been loth to sell their loans.

The deficit at troubled Bus Éireann jumped sharply in the first two months of the year, rising 41 per cent to €2.2 million versus €1.5 million for the same period last year, new accounts show. The accounts reveal total revenues rose 3 per cent from €27.6 million to €28.4 million in the first eight weeks of the year due to a 14 per cent rise in the Public Service Obligation (PSO) subvention grant to €6.6 million, the Irish Times reported. Revenues from operations were flat at €21.7 million, with turnover from the company’s Expressway services down 5 per cent.

Last year Indonesia’s finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, invited chief executives, directors and shareholders from the country’s leading industries to banquets at her ministry, The Economist reported. As they munched, she would give presentations setting out who among them had—and, by omission, who had not—signed up to the government’s tax amnesty. “This may be the most expensive dinner in your lifetime,” the 54-year-old economist recalls telling them. Indonesia’s tax amnesty, which began in July 2016, ended on March 31st.

The European Central Bank’s recent moves mark the first steps in winding down its aggressive monetary stimulus and the bank could soon take fresh steps toward an exit if economic data remain strong, a top ECB official said. Klaas Knot, who sits on the ECB’s rate-setting committee as governor of the Dutch central bank, said policy makers were increasingly optimistic about the strength of the economic recovery under way in the 19-nation eurozone, The Wall Street Journal reported.

China's State Power Investment Corp said Westinghouse's bankruptcy filing would not have a "substantial impact" on the country's nuclear plans and the two sides would ensure a key AP1000 reactor project would be completed on schedule this year, Reuters reported. The project is the world's first Westinghouse-designed AP1000 reactor project, being built at Sanmen on China's eastern coast, and is one of four reactors planned with State Power.

A senior European Central Bank official has raised questions about the institution’s major new powers to regulate banks after its legal independence came in for unprecedented criticism from a global anti-corruption watchdog, the Financial Times reported. Yves Mersch, one of six executive board members, said the ECB’s new role as the eurozone’s banking watchdog should be subject to greater democratic scrutiny but defended its role as part of the “troika” of bailout institutions during the sovereign debt crisis.

Russia won an early verdict in a London lawsuit that may force Ukraine to repay part of a defaulted $3 billion bond, in a dispute that extended the battle over Russia’s annexation of Crimea into a U.K courtroom, Bloomberg News reported. Judge William Blair threw out all of Ukraine’s arguments Wednesday, saying he was at pains to distinguish between the law and the "troubling" political background. He ruled the case shouldn’t go to a full trial but gave Ukraine the right to appeal.

Aurelius Equity Opportunities shares plunged for a second day after executive rebuttals of Tuesday’s allegations from short seller Gotham City Research failed to soothe wary investors, Bloomberg News reported. Aurelius tumbled a record 35 percent to 35 euros in Frankfurt trading. The plunge follows a 17 percent decline yesterday after Gotham published a 68-page report questioning the company’s accounting. The stock is worth no more than 8.50 euros, the short seller said yesterday.

One of the big fights in the negotiations over the U.K.’s exit from the European Union will be over money: the EU’s so-called “divorce bill.” The idea of having to pay the EU to leave is controversial in the U.K. after a referendum campaign in which the British contribution to the bloc was an important argument used by campaigners for Brexit, The Wall Street Journal Real Time Brussels blog reported. The Leave campaign claimed erroneously that the U.K. sent the EU £350 million ($435 million) a week, money it suggested could be better used to finance Britain’s state-run health service.