Headlines

The International Monetary Fund has reiterated its call for debt relief for Greece, raising pressure on European countries to cede to Greek demands for debt re-profiling, the Irish Times reported. In a statement released in Davos following a meeting between Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, the Washington-based fund said it was ready to support Greece but only if it was granted “significant” debt relief by its European partners.

Russian state development bank VEB will need state funds in the second quarter of this year, its chairman Vladimir Dmitriev was quoted as saying on Friday, after the bank was granted an extension on some of its liabilities late last year, Reuters reported. Russian authorities had previously been considering a package of as much as 1.2 trillion roubles ($15.2 billion) to VEB over a couple of years, to help the state bank to deal with bad loans and pay off some of its debt.

Portugal’s newly appointed Socialist government said Friday that it will reverse public wage cuts and lower some taxes this year, but it will still manage to cut the country’s budget deficit by increasing other taxes and projecting higher economic growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. Finance Minister Mario Centeno said in a press conference that he sees the economy growing 2.1% this year, above the 1.7% projected by the European Commission in November of last year.

Brazil's Mines and Energy Ministry said on Friday it held talks this month with various investors in the transmission line and wind sectors to feel out potential interest in taking over local projects abandoned by Spain's financially distressed Abengoa SA, Reuters reported. The ministry told Reuters it had met with executives from local and international energy firms including Spain's Cymimasa and Elecnor, China State Grid and Brazil's Engevix and Alupar. It also met with wind investors from Italy's Enel Green Power and local firm Casa dos Ventos.

Russia's central bank said on Thursday it had revoked the licence of Vneshprombank, a major mid-sized bank whose collapse is one of the a largest-ever in Russia, Reuters reported. The central bank said it had closed the bank, one of the top 40 by assets, after discovering it had a hole in its balance sheet estimated at 187.4 billion roubles ($2.3 billion). The move underscores the growing strain on the country's banking sector as an economic slump is exacerbated by plunging oil prices.

Matteo Renzi will celebrate a big investment by Apple in Naples today — just the kind of moment the youthful prime minister likes to project as a sign of Italy's renewal after years of stagnation and recession, the Financial Times reported. But that news — following a similar announcement by Cisco earlier this week — has been overshadowed by a deepening crisis of confidence in Italy's banks. They have suffered steep share price declines in recent days, triggered by what appears to have been a clumsy government restructuring of four medium-sized banks in November.

Creditors of Heta Asset Resolution AG who say they control more than 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion) of the bad bank’s debt won’t sell at a discount, highlighting the battle Austria faces as it tries to share losses with creditors and prevent a provincial insolvency, Bloomberg News reported. The Austrian state of Carinthia, which has guaranteed 11 billion euros of Heta’s debt and is offering to buy it up for about 3 billion euros less than the face value, is able to fully pay up, the creditors said in a statement on Thursday.

Spain's Abengoa needs 90 million euros within 10 days and 500 million euros by March 28 to avoid going bust, a source familiar with the matter said, a number that more than doubles initial calculations and raises new doubts over its survival, Reuters reported. The engineering and renewable energy firm is currently busy working on a viability plan that it hopes will convince creditor banks and bondholders to provide this emergency liquidity, the source also said.

The plunge in the price of oil is causing more investors to bet that Venezuela will default on its $120 billion pile of foreign debt, an event that would trigger a messy battle over the country’s oil shipments and deepen its economic and political crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported. Despite Venezuela’s worst economic slump since independence from Spain, the socialist government has continued to pay bondholders on time. President Nicolás Maduro this week reiterated the country’s intention to honor its debt. Few investors doubt Venezuela’s willingness to pay.

Brantano UK, a seller of popular shoe brands including Wrangler and Nike, has been placed under administration, just months after the High Street retailer was bought by an investor specialising in distressed retail brands, Reuters reported. The company's investors called in administrators after efforts to make it more commercially viable had failed, administrator PwC said in a statement. The move could put about 2,000 jobs at risk. Brantano UK is an out-of-town value family footwear retailer with 140 stores and 66 concessions across the UK.