Headlines

Living expenses for members of businessman Sean Quinn’s family must continue to be paid from accounts frozen four years ago rather than from their personal accounts, the High Court has ruled. Mr Justice Brian McGovern refused an application from a receiver appointed over their assets aimed at having the money come from their personal accounts first before any call is made on the frozen accounts, the Irish Times reported.

Multinational corporations may find it harder to escape taxation after European Union states tightened rules on Tuesday to counter tax avoidance, the International New York Times reported. Public anger has grown since news articles revealed how companies such as Amazon and Starbucks have used legal means to vastly reduce their tax bills and since the Panama Papers and the so-called Luxleaks scandals exposed the extent of problem.

Brazil’s troubled telephone company Oi SA on Monday filed the largest bankruptcy protection request in the country’s history just days after debt restructuring talks with creditors collapsed, The Wall Street Journal reported. The filing of Oi and six subsidiaries lists 65.4 billion reais ($19.26 billion) in debt. In its filing, the company said it chose judicial reorganization to preserve the value of its holdings and to continue providing service to its customers.

The European Central Bank’s top policymakers will meet on Tuesday to discuss how to ensure that a possible British exit from the EU would not snuff out the eurozone’s tentative economic recovery, the Financial Times reported. The ECB believes it has the tools to weather the immediate aftermath of a Brexit and ensuing global market turmoil.

Venezuela is “highly unlikely” to have enough hard currency to fully make its debt payments this year, although a default isn’t inevitable, according to a report from Moody’s Investors Service, Bloomberg News reported. State-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, which has large payments due this year, is likely to default before the sovereign, the credit ratings company said. That, in turn, could imperil government finances to the point it won’t be able to make payments either, according to the report.

Venezuela is convulsing from hunger, the International New York Times reported. Hundreds of people here in the city of Cumaná, home to one of the region’s independence heroes, marched on a supermarket in recent days, screaming for food. They forced open a large metal gate and poured inside. They snatched water, flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar, potatoes, anything they could find, leaving behind only broken freezers and overturned shelves. And they showed that even in a country with the largest oil reserves in the world, it is possible for people to riot because there is not enough food.

As a deal to sell BHS was hammered out in 2015, lawyers for the buyer repeatedly reduced the amount of cash they wanted Sir Philip Green to inject into the ailing retailer’s underfunded pension scheme, documents reveal, the Financial Times reported. MPs are probing the funding arrangements of the BHS pension plan after the group’s collapse this year left about 20,000 scheme members facing cuts to their retirement income.

Lenders to Irish mining group Kenmare Resources have approved the company’s restructuring plan, which will see the group cut its debt by $269 million (€238m) through a share sale, the Irish Times reported. In a statement on Monday, Kenmare said that “significant progress” had been made ahead of the proposed capital raise and it is “confident” that it will be able to deliver the agreed debt restructuring and working capital requirements of the group. The company defaulted on its debts earlier this year after failing to reach agreement with lenders on a deleveraging plan.

Multinational corporations may find it harder to escape taxation after European Union states tightened rules on Tuesday to counter tax avoidance, the International New York Times reported. Public anger has grown since news articles revealed how companies such as Amazon and Starbucks have used legal means to vastly reduce their tax bills and since the Panama Papers and the so-called Luxleaks scandals exposed the extent of problem.

China is renegotiating billions of dollars of loans to Venezuela and has met with the country’s political opposition, marking a shift in its approach to a nation it once viewed as a US counterweight in the Americas. Venezuela is facing one of the worst crises of its 200-year history, with a collapsing economy and political deadlock stoked by the oil price slump. China, which is Caracas’s biggest creditor and has loaned the country $65bn since 2005, has already extended the repayment schedules for debts backed by oil sales.