Headlines

Italian banks are stuck in what stressed-debt experts call purgatory, still forced to pay a heavy price for their past sins despite loan data that suggests they are turning a corner. The rate at which loans are souring hit an eight-year low last year, but banks still face some 8 billion euros (6.74 billion pounds) a year in fresh writedowns, based on past rates at which already-soured loans have gone into outright default, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

A South Korean court declared Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd bankrupt on Friday, after ruling earlier this month that the firm's liquidation value would be worth more than its value as a going concern, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Hanjin Shipping, which had been the world's seventh-largest container shipper, applied for court receivership in late August after its creditor banks halted further support. The Seoul Central District Court said in a statement it has chosen a bankruptcy administrator, and claims by creditors are due by May 1, 2017.

The eurozone’s most hawkish member states have laid out their positions ahead of a discussion on Greece’s bailout progress today, following an escalation in tensions between its creditors in recent weeks, the Financial Times reported.

Wanted: a chief executive to run Greece's bank-rescue fund. Job description: work hard and pray for a miracle. Greece has failed to find a boss for its Hellenic Financial Stability Fund since July, when its three-member executive team resigned, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. A new CEO, offered the job in late October quit a week later. His predecessor, an interim boss, had lasted two months.

PDG Realty SA, the Brazilian homebuilder struggling with a cash crunch, is considering surrendering buildings and land given as collateral to creditors ahead of a potential in-court reorganization, two people directly involved in the plan said. São Paulo-based PDG hired restructuring advisory firm RK Partners in November to come up with a rescue plan, Reuters reported. Terms of the plan contemplate giving creditors control of some assets guaranteeing debt issued by about 700 special purpose vehicles created to fund projects, the people said.

Since its founding in 1873 as Japan’s first maker of telegraph equipment, Toshiba has survived a litany of challenges, from the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, to having its factories bombed into rubble during World War II, to the drubbing of the Zune music player it co-developed with Microsoft. Now the conglomerate may be undone by four nuclear power plants under construction in the American South, Bloomberg News reported.

Geoffrey Stevenson, who was in charge of exploration company Petroceltic’s prime asset in the Algerian desert until the company was bought out of examinership last year following a bitter takeover battle, is taking on the new owners of the business in the High Court in Dublin, the Irish Times reported. Mr Stevenson was not an employee of Petroceltic prior to the takeover by Swiss-Cayman Islands fund Worldview Capital, but rather he was a consultant and also project director at Petroceltic’s Ain Tsila gas field project in Algeria.

Another January, another credit blowout. But the month’s record lending activity signals mounting pressure on corporate China to roll over its debt as much as it does confidence in the economy, the Financial Times reported. The People’s Bank of China is now tightening monetary policy at the margins but is constrained in how far it can go because of the mounting pressures to service outstanding, and growing, debt obligations.

Argentina's President Mauricio Macri said on Thursday he would annul an agreement his government reached to resolve a 15-year-old debt the country's postal service incurred when it was owned by Macri's father, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Macri spoke after a federal prosecutor asked a judge to open an investigation into him and Communications Minister Oscar Aguad earlier this week.

Greece's economy has met its budget targets and there is therefore no reason for further austerity measures to be imposed as part of a deal with bailout creditors, the government spokesman said Thursday. Greece has been struggling for months to conclude negotiations with its creditors on spending cuts and reforms demanded by European creditors and the International Monetary Fund as part of its third bailout program, The New Zealand Herald reported on an Associated Press story. It hopes to reach an agreement in time for a Monday meeting of eurozone finance ministers.