Headlines

Pilots of German carrier Deutsche Lufthansa AG will go on strike again Monday and Tuesday in their continuing dispute over retirement benefits, The Wall Street Journal reported. The pilots union, Vereinigung Cockpit, said in a statement the strike will start at 11:00 GMT on Monday and would end at 21:59 GMT on Tuesday, and would affect Lufthansa’s Airbus 320 family, Boeing 737 and Embraer planes. Lufthansa said about 1,450 flights will be canceled on Monday and Tuesday because of the strikes. More than 200,000 customers will be affected by the walkout, the company added.

Regulators probing Banco Espírito Santo SA, the large Portuguese bank whose collapse rattled global markets this summer, have focused in public on relatively recent problems that doomed the lender and its affiliated companies, The Wall Street Journal reported. But the bank’s reliance on off-balance-sheet funding vehicles stretches much further back than previously reported. Back in 2002, for example, when the bank was looking to boost its capital, it turned to two British Virgin Islands entities that had been set up on the bank’s behalf.

Although Venezuela has the largest energy reserves in the world, its deteriorating economy has forced Nicolás Maduro, the president, to slash imports to cover foreign debt payments amid a severe hard currency crunch that has already produced shortages of almost everything, from toilet paper to medical supplies, the Financial Times reported. “It is hard to believe, but there are worse shortages in Venezuela than there are in Syria,” said Moisés Naím, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Embattled West African iron-ore miner London Mining Plc said on Thursday that its board had decided to place the company into administration, Reuters reported. The company, which owns the Marampa mine in Sierra Leone, has been battling high costs, a sharp drop in iron prices and the impact of the Ebola virus on operations in West Africa. "The board and management will be working with the administrator of London Mining Plc to maintain the Marampa mine as a going concern," the miner said in a statement.

Just a few months ago, Greece appeared to be on the road to recovery. But in recent days it has helped stir up a storm in European bond markets as investors realized that Athens might not be on such a firm path after all, the International New York Times reported. Signs of instability in the Greek government and concern that it may attempt an early exit from its internationally supervised bailout program have intensified worries in global financial markets about the state of the eurozone.

International Monetary Fund Chief Christine Lagarde lamented last week that the world has “too little economic risk taking, and too much financial risk taking.” In the Philippines, there might be both, Bloomberg News reported. Companies in the Southeast Asian nation eager to make acquisitions and capital investments are piling on foreign debt, in the process leaving the economy vulnerable should emerging-market currencies get roiled again.

Borrowers are not ready for higher interest rates and could struggle to pay the bills even with a small rise in repayments, RBS chief Ross McEwan warned yesterday. Most RBS and NatWest mortgage borrowers had never experienced an interest rate rise, he said, and nationally more than 1.5m borr­owers bought their house after 2007 when rates last went up. He is setting up a task force headed by RBS senior economist Sebastian Burnside to study the impact of a rate rise, and come up with a plan to prepare borrowers.

The trickle of toxic debt being sold by Italian banks is turning into a torrent as UniCredit prepares to announce the disposal of more than €5 billion in bad loans to private equity investors, the Irish Times reported. UK group AnaCap Financial Partners has bought a €1.9 billion portfolio of non-performing loans to Italian small- and medium-sized companies for a significant discount to their face value.

Some top banks are making special payments to top executives, circumventing European Union rules capping bonuses, and the practice should stop, the bloc’s banking watchdog said, The Wall Street Journal reported. The payments aren’t in line with new EU regulations, intended to remove the temptation for financial executives to boost profits—and their bonuses—by taking risks that could damage the banks over the long term, the European Banking Authority said. National supervisors should address the practice by year end, it said.

The main subsidiary of Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista's iron ore mining company MMX Mineracao e Metalicos SA filed a bankruptcy protection petition before a Brazilian court on Wednesday, Reuters reported. MMX Sudeste Mineracao SA, the unit that holds MMX's main mining assets, made the request after negotiations with creditors and efforts to seek new investors failed, MMX said in a filing. MMX Sudeste is the main operating unit of MMX and is developing iron ore mines in Minas Gerais state on its own and in partnership with Usiminas, one of the largest steelmakers in the Americas.