Headlines

Cuba has reached a deal with its creditors where the county will pay $2.6 billion in arrears over an 18-year period while $4 billion of its debt will be forgiven, The Wall Street Journal reported. The deal comes after months of negotiations between the Communist nation and the Paris Club, an informal group of developed creditor nations. The talks stem from Cuba’s lingering $16 billion debt which it defaulted in 1986.

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm will spend Christmas and the following two months in the maximum-security prison in Plymouth, south of Boston, after being denied bail, the Irish Times reported. A spokeswoman for Plymouth County Correctional Facility confirmed that they were holding the 49-year-old former banker. He is being held in custody pending his extradition in a Boston court in early March 2016. The Dubliner’s prisoner identity number is “68201.” The all-male prison holds about 1,000 county, state and federal inmates.

Greece and its international creditors reached a deal on Friday on a new set of economic overhauls the government must implement to receive the next slice of €1 billion ($1.1 billion) in financial aid, The Wall Street Journal reported. “We have reached a deal on this round,” Greek Economy Minister George Stathakis told reporters after the latest round of negotiations. The list of reforms includes overhauls to the country’s banking sector, the design of a privatization fund and the partial privatization of the country’s power grid operator, ADMIE.

Champion Iron Mine said Friday it will buy a Quebec iron ore mine for C$10.5 million ($7.65 million), just a sliver of the C$4.9 billion that Cliffs Natural Resources paid in 2011, when metal prices surged on booming Chinese demand, Reuters reported. The downturn in bulk commodities allowed Champion to negotiate a "competitive" bid, said Chief Executive Michael O'Keeffe in a statement, including C$10.5 million in cash, C$41.7 million for environmental reclamation and about C$1.1 million for bonds.

Canada moved to address growing unease about housing-market conditions in two of the country’s biggest cities, as officials here continue to grapple with the risks posed by Canadians’ high debt levels, The Wall Street Journal reported. Finance Minister Bill Morneau on Friday unveiled the latest in a series of actions Canada has taken to stem the growth of household debt, especially mortgage debt, which has reached record levels as consumers capitalize on an extended period of low rates.

Anglo American is preparing for a fight in South Africa over its restructuring plans as it considers whether to exit its investment in the country’s largest iron ore miner, the Financial Times reported. Kumba Iron Ore is on a long list of assets Anglo is considering putting up for sale as part of proposals outlined last week by Mark Cutifani, chief executive, to arrest the miner’s underperformance in a deepening commodities downturn. Mr Cutifani said Anglo must concentrate on its most profitable assets and could end up with a portfolio of about 20 mines from more than 50 today.

Matteo Renzi, Italy’s centre-left prime minister, is facing a political backlash over the €3.6bn rescue of four small banks last month, after thousands of retail investors who lost money in the deal have mounted increasingly vocal protests, the Financial Times reported. The public opposition has led Italian officials to consider the rare step of paying a “social subsidy” to the most financially vulnerable junior bondholders who took a hit in the agreement to save Banca Etruria, Banca Marche, CariFerrara and CariChieti.

In recent years, investing in Greece has always been a bit of an all-or-nothing affair as the lure of sky-high returns has always been tempered by the very real prospect that you might lose your shirt, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. And so it was last week when a group of prominent investors came here to gauge whether, in the wake of Greece’s close brush with leaving the euro last summer, it was safe to invest in Greek assets again.

Spanish engineering group Abengoa and creditor banks agreed on Thursday to put on hold an option of selling shares in its Abengoa Yield business as a means of raising money, two banking sources briefed on the talks said, Reuters reported. Abengoa, trying to avoid becoming Spain's biggest-ever bankruptcy, is negotiating a multi-million-euro lifeline with creditor banks which have asked the company to guarantee it with assets.

A deal to reduce Greece’s debt burden could include capping interest payments, extending debt maturities and linking debt repayments to economic growth, according to a paper drawn up by the eurozone’s bailout fund, The Wall Street Journal reported. The nine-page document, dated Aug. 10 and seen by The Wall Street Journal, was put together by the European Stability Mechanism, the Luxembourg-based eurozone bailout fund, and outlines different options to reduce Greece’s large debt load.