Headlines

The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) - the euro zone's bailout fund - should ultimately be turned into a European version of the International Monetary Fund, the head of euro zone finance ministers told a German newspaper. "I think it would make a lot of sense for the euro zone bailout fund ESM to be developed into a European IMF in the medium to long term," Jeroen Dijsselbloem told Monday's edition of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) lifted borrowing costs in step with the Fed overnight, the Financial Times reported. But the real question is: can China’s economy handle this sort of tightening at this stage in its cycle? Diana Choyleva of Enodo Economics (one of the few economists to accurately forecast the yuan’s depreciation) believes it can’t. On one hand the PBoC is lifting rates, on the other, it’s been engaged in the injection of a record amount of liquidity over the last year to prevent market rates from rising organically.

Portugal's Caixa Geral de Depositos will meet investors from next Monday ahead of a planned Additional Tier 1 transaction, part of a package designed to nurse the state-rescued lender back to health, Reuters reported. Caixa Geral de Depositos confirmed to IFR last month that it had mandated banks for a deal, also the first AT1 trade out of Portugal. On Thursday it announced investor meetings starting Monday March 20 via Barclays, Caixa - Banco de Investimento, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan ahead of a €500m no-grow perpetual non-call five.

A major Spanish energy provider is fighting the Colombian government’s seizure of its assets on the country’s Caribbean coast, threatening to take South America’s third-largest economy to international arbitration, the Financial Times reported. Colombia’s services regulator said it has ordered the liquidation of power supplier Electricaribe, an affiliate of Spain’s Gas Natural, due to a lack of quality, solvency and investment.

Shares in Eurozone banks have finally recovered the losses suffered in the global sell-off that hit markets at the start of last year, with a key index of the sector hitting its highest level since the end of 2015, the Financial Times reported. Bank stocks were hit hard last year, initially prompted by fears fears of an economic shock in China. Political shocks including the Brexit vote as well as structural problems in countries including Italy and Germany hampered its recovery, but the shares have rallied strongly since Donald Trump’s US election victory.

The number of owner-occupier mortgages at least three months in arrears fell 3.7 per cent during the final three months of 2016, marking the 13th consecutive quarterly decline, as the economy continued to improve and banks restructured their soured loans, the Irish Times reported. Some 54,269 home loans, or 7.4 per cent of a total of 736,894 Irish mortgages, valued at €100 billion, remained at least 90 days behind in repayments at the end of December, the Central Bank said on Thursday. The rate fell from 7.6 per cent from the previous quarter.

Private-equity backed French clothing retailer Vivarte, in talks to restructure more than 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) of debt, has sealed a deal with its lenders, chairman and chief executive Patrick Puy told French newspaper Les Echos, Reuters reported. Vivarte, which has put up several of its brands for sale under the restructuring, could announce the sale of its Pataugas shoe brand to a private investor within two weeks, he added. The debt restructuring plan, which was agreed by all of the retailer's 172 creditors, calls for the conversion of 846 million euros of debt into equity.

Investors trying to make sense of China’s National People’s Congress last week and its relation to the more important 19th Party Congress to be held later this year should familiarize themselves with an old saying: “The mountains are high and the emperor is far away.” Orders from Beijing are often ignored in the cities and provinces. Instead, important decisions such as whether and how to restructure the debt of insolvent local governments and state-owned enterprises are made locally, a Bloomberg View reported.

The bitter political standoff between Venezuela’s government and opposition may have cost the crisis-torn country nearly half a billion dollars in loans from one of its last active multilateral lenders as a fourth year of recession grips the economy, Bloomberg News reported. The Development Bank of Latin America, or CAF, is said to be reconsidering whether to issue fresh loans to Venezuela -- a principal member and home to its headquarters -- due to a legal dispute between the National Assembly and the Supreme Court, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.

European Union banks may face increasing risks from bad loans totalling 1 trillion euros (902.8 billion pounds) when the European Central Bank cuts back its economic stimulus programme, internal EU documents seen by Reuters said. Banks have been saddled with more so-called non-performing loans (NPLs) following the 2008 global financial crisis, as companies and households have struggled to pay their debts, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. This in turn has crimped their ability to make new loans.