Headlines

The Italian government cleared the way for the potential rescue of lenders, including Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, by seeking permission from parliament to increase the nation’s public debt by as much as 20 billion euros ($21 billion), Bloomberg reported. Monte dei Paschi Chief Executive Officer Marco Morelli is scampering to find investors to back a private 5 billion-euro capital increase, which also includes a share sale and a debt-for-equity swap.

Around 4,000 retail customers of Banco Espirito Santo who lost their savings when the banking group collapsed in 2014 should get around 60 percent of their money back under a plan presented on Monday by the Portuguese government, Reuters reported. The retail investors have protested and taken legal action to try to get compensation for their losses since the government stepped in to rescue Banco Espirito Santo. This included an injection of 4.9 billion euros ($5.12 billion) into the healthy part of the bank now known as Novo Banco.

Soaring price growth in China’s top cities has slowed almost to a standstill, as government measures to cool the overheated property market take hold, the Financial Times reported. Price growth of newly built homes in China’s “first tier” cities of Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Guangzhou slowed to 0.1 per cent in November compared with the previous month, the National Statistics Bureau said on Monday — well below month-on-month growth of 3-4 per cent seen in such cities earlier this year.

When it extended its bond-purchase program this month, the European Central Bank needed to choose between buying bonds at extremely negative returns or gearing stimulus toward eurozone nations that need it the most, The Wall Street Journal reported. It chose the former. Every move by policy makers in the single-currency eurozone is supposed to avoid benefiting some nations over others. But now, due in part to the design of ECB rules, more stimulus is delivered to the healthiest economies and less to those that are lagging behind.

Bank supervision and anti-money laundering standards need to be toughened in global geopolitical hotspots as a way of tackling the recent decline in so-called correspondent banking, a global group of policymakers has said, the Financial Times reported.

Romania’s Government approved in the Thursday meeting the decision to postpone by six months the entry into force of the law on personal insolvency, until August 1, next year. The law had to come into force at the beginning of 2017. The Government postponed implementing the law because it requires a complex system, namely setting up 42 insolvency commissions at national level, acquiring the necessary technical apparatus, and adopting the norms for implementing the law. In order for these new structures to operate, they need human and financial resources.

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA will launch a share sale Monday in a last-ditch attempt by the troubled Italian lender to avert being nationalized, The Wall Street Journal reported. The bank needs to raise about €5 billion ($5.23 billion) in fresh capital by the end of the year to stay afloat. If it fails to do so, the Italian government will step in and bail out the bank, according to a Treasury official. Monte dei Paschi said Sunday it would reserve 65% of the new shares being sold for institutional investors and that the offer will be open until 1300 GMT on Thursday.

A group led by creditors and Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris unveiled on Friday an alternative restructuring proposal for debt-laden Brazilian phone carrier Oi SA that contemplates 37 billion reais ($11 billion) in investments over five years in exchange for a 95 percent stake, Reuters reported. The group of bondholders represented by Moelis & Co and Sawiris told Oi on Friday they would also raise $1.25 billion in new capital and take immediate control of the carrier through a debt-for-equity swap. Oi filed in June for Brazil's largest ever bankruptcy protection.

Carrying trash bags and backpacks filled with cash, Venezuelans fretfully lined up on Friday outside banks across the country to exchange currency that President Nicolás Maduro said would soon be void. Mr. Maduro’s decision that all 100-bolívar notes must be exchanged has caused panic, partly because the deadline keeps shifting and many banks and businesses are already refusing to accept them. For many people without bank accounts, the bills, which have long been the country’s highest-denomination note, are their primary means of saving money.

Ecovix Engevix Construções Oceánicas SA and five subsidiaries have filed for bankruptcy protection in a federal commercial court, succumbing to a debt burden of 8 billion reais ($2.4 billion) and a plunge in shipbuilding, Reuters reported. In a statement on Friday, Ecovix said Banco Brasil Plural SA and law firm Felsberg Advogados will advise it on bankruptcy protection proceedings, which will take place in a court based in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Cash at the shipbuilder is being depleted at this point, the statement said.