Headlines

Specialist PV manufacturing equipment supplier Singulus Technologies has highlighted the essential support it needs from shareholders and bondholders to avert liquidity issues that would force the company into insolvency, PVTech reported. The company is planning to hold several bondholder meetings and an Extraordinary General Meeting in an attempt to gain support for balance sheet restructuring that will allow further corporate restructuring. Read more.

Multinational companies would be forced to publish a country-specific breakdown of the profits they make and the taxes they pay under plans being prepared by Brussels to counter tax avoidance, the Financial Times reported. According to EU officials, the European Commission is preparing a draft law to extend to other sectors a version of a set of rules that already exist for banks and the extractive industries. The measures are in response to a growing public and political backlash in Europe against corporate tax avoidance.

The Bank of Italy has long been considered a bastion of competence and stability in the eurozone’s third-largest economy — a counterweight to the often flighty economic stewardship of successive governments in Rome. But the sharp sell-off of Italian financial shares since the turn of the year — as investors fret over tough new EU “bail-in” rules and the large pile of non-performing loans on banks’ balance sheets — has turned up the heat on the central bank amid charges that it failed to protect the banking system.

Deutsche Bank AG became the largest lender in at least four years to feel compelled to reassure investors and employees that it has enough cash to pay its debts, Bloomberg News reported. Germany’s biggest bank said in a statement Monday that it has more-than-sufficient means to pay coupons on its riskiest debt both this year and in 2017.

Days after central banks initiated a stress test of two trade-plumbing firms in Europe, LCH.Clearnet Group Ltd. said a German bank had defaulted on its financial obligations at the clearinghouse operator, The Wall Street Journal reported. Martin Pluves, chief executive officer at LCH, declared Frankfurt-based Maple Bank GmbH to be a “defaulter” in a Feb. 8 notice posted to the clearinghouse’s website. Maple, whose parent company Maple Financial Group Inc.

Two of Europe's most powerful central bankers have called on the eurozone to form its own treasury and push forward with a quantum leap in integration to secure the single currency's future, The Telegraph reported. Germany's Jens Weidmann and France's newly appointed François Villeroy de Galhau urged member states to move towards a "comprehensive sharing of sovereignty" which would include a common 19-member treasury and an "independent fiscal council" with a eurozone parliament.

Goodwill Industries of Toronto, Eastern, Central and Northern Ontario says it's seeking bankruptcy protection as it tries to restructure, CTV News reported on a Canadian Press story. CEO Keiko Nakamura said Monday in a statement the Goodwill has filed an assignment under Canada's Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. The statement says the purpose of the filing is to preserve Goodwill's assets for its principal creditors, who are collectively the former employees of the corporation.

Soaring household debt in Asia is one of the starkest legacies of the post-2008 low rates world order. If 10 years ago US households stood out as some of the most leveraged in the world, today, Asia is home to the highest household debt globally. But some Asian countries, even those with household debt equal to over 80 per cent of GDP, are faring better than others, the Financial Times reported. Countries where debt has grown gradually and where regulators implemented pre-emptive macro prudential policies are more likely to minimise blows to economic growth.

At every turn in his improbably rapid rise, Ding Ning, 34, went to great efforts to convey the image of strong government backing for his Internet financing business, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. But it all came crashing down in dramatic fashion for Mr. Ding this week, when the police alleged that his financing business, Ezubao, was a $7.6 billion Ponzi scheme and announced 21 arrests, including of Mr. Ding. The company was shut down. The charges were conveyed by the same official outlets whose favor Mr.

Argentina has offered to pay $6.5 billion to a group of hedge funds holding bonds it defaulted on 14 years ago in a historic effort by the nation to put a bitter legal battle behind it, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Montreux Partners and Dart Management, two of the hedge funds, have accepted the proposal, which would pay three-quarters of a $9 billion claim on defaulted bonds, according to emailed statements from Daniel A. Pollack, a court-appointed arbiter, and Argentina’s finance ministry.