Headlines

The Spanish lender CaixaBank is set to proceed with a takeover offer for BPI, a Portuguese bank, after reaching an 11th-hour agreement with an Angolan investor who had blocked its bid, the International New York Times reported. BPI announced late on Sunday that a deal had been reached between its two main shareholders, CaixaBank and Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s longstanding president, after a yearlong dispute.

Greece and its creditors paused negotiations early Tuesday without reaching an agreement over the country’s bailout review and will continue next week after the International Monetary Fund’s annual spring meetings, according to the Greek Finance Minister, The Wall Street Journal reported. “Progress has been made on the issues needed in order to have a deal,” Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said. Mr.

The Consumer Debt Clearance Act (消費者債務清理條例) should be amended to make it easier for debtors to apply for bankruptcy, campaigners said yesterday, adding that the number of applicants have not increased significantly following reforms in 2011, The Taipei Times reported.

A disgraced former Spanish banker, Mario Conde, was arrested on Monday as part of an investigation into whether he fraudulently repatriated the equivalent of nearly $15 million in money he had hidden offshore while presiding over the collapse of one of Spain’s largest banks, Banesto, more than two decades ago, the International New York Times reported. Mr. Conde was arrested along with six other people, including two of his children and a son-in-law. The arrest was ordered by a judge from Spain’s national court who is inquiring whether Mr.

Paris and Berlin are pressing industrialised nations to pull together a common blacklist of territories that breach transparency standards, in the toughest government responses yet to the Panama Papers affair, the Financial Times reported. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, and Michel Sapin, his French counterpart, also emphasised the need for sharing and publishing the names of the ultimate beneficiaries of all corporate structures, including shell companies, trusts and foundations that can offer anonymity to their users.

Italy is rushing to cobble together an industry-led rescue to address mounting concerns over the solidity of a banking sector whose woes pose a risk to the wider eurozone economy, the Financial Times reported. Finance minister Pier Carlo Padoan has called a meeting in Rome on Monday with executives from Italy’s largest financial institutions to agree final details of a “last resort” bailout plan.

A referendum to determine whether Britain will leave the European Union has been set for June 23. Until voters decide whether they would rather be in or out, investors will have to decide whether to be in or out of assets in Britain and other parts of Europe, the International New York Times reported. Neither decision will be easy. The referendum outcome is a tossup in polls, and analysts are divided on whether the country would be better off in or out of the 28-nation bloc.

Austria became the first European country to use a new law to share losses of a failed bank with senior creditors as it slashed the value of debt owed by Heta Asset Resolution AG, Bloomberg News reported. The Austrian banking regulator cut Heta’s senior liabilities by 54 percent and extended the maturities of all eligible debt to Dec. 31, 2023, it said in a statement published on its website on Sunday, to help cover an 8 billion-euro ($9.1 billion) hole in Heta’s balance sheet.

An economic, social and political crisis facing Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s unpopular president, is being aggravated by a rise in violence which is prompting fears that this oil-rich country risks becoming a failed state. Critics say that the Venezuelan government is increasingly unable to provide citizens with water, electricity, health or a functioning economy which can supply basic food staples or indispensable medicines, let alone personal safety. All this is creating a broad unease that Mr Maduro is unable to maintain order.

An Argentine prosecutor has requested that former President Cristina Kirchner be investigated as suspect in a wide-ranging money-laundering probe allegedly involving a prominent government contractor and associate of Mrs. Kirchner, The Wall Street Journal reported. State news agency Telam reported on Saturday that federal prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan made the request to the judge in charge of the investigation focusing on Lázaro Báez, the owner of leading construction firms and partner of hotel and property businesses with Mrs.