Headlines

U.K. Treasury chief George Osborne Tuesday announced plans to sell billions of pounds of publicly owned buildings and land in the latest stage of his 10-year plan to repair Britain’s public finances, The Wall Street Journal reported. As part of a review of government spending due in the autumn, the Treasury has asked government departments to earmark bits of their estates that could be sold to raise cash. Properties that may end up on the block include some of the Ministry of Defence’s 15 golf courses and dozens of prime central London offices.

Insolvency rates on the Isle of Wight are among the highest in the country according to latest figures, the County Press reported. They paint a bleak picture for the Island which has been ranked joint 18th in a league table of local authority areas with the highest levels of insolvency, and named in the top ten for the highest number of Debt Relief Orders (DRO). The figures, released by the Association of Business Recovery Professionals (R3), show the rate of individual insolvencies per 10,000 adult population.

An interim examiner has been appointed to Best, the company operating thirteen Best Menswear stores across Ireland and two other fashion stores employing 130 people, the Irish Times reported. The sudden closure of Clerys department store in Dublin last month had a “catastrophic” effect on the cashflow of Best as it was a concession holder operating its largest store from the Clerys premises, the court heard.

Reopening the doors of Greek banks on Monday was just the beginning. Restoring trust in the banks, so that customers will be willing to deposit their money again, is one of the most important tasks that Greek and eurozone officials will face as they try to get the economy moving again, the International New York Times reported. But undoing the damage wrought in recent months will take money and time, as well as agreement among quarreling eurozone nations.

The Chinese company building the $3.5 billion Baha Mar resort in the Bahamas plans to file a motion to dismiss the bankruptcy case related to the project, which is nearly complete and seen as vital to the former British colony's fragile economy, Reuters reported. China Construction America (CCA), a unit of Chinese State Construction Engineering Corp Ltd, could file the motion to dismiss as early as Monday afternoon, a lawyer for the firm told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Carey during a hearing in Wilmington, Delaware.

Like several hundred cities across France, Châteauneuf-les-Martigues took out a variable-interest-rate loan in the mid-2000s to restructure debt and reduce interest payments. The loans offered very low interest rates for the first few years, before the rate would start to vary according to the value of the Swiss franc. Contracts that convey currency risk in this way fall under the category of what are known as financial swaps, The Wall Street Journal reported. At their inception, the loans had appeal to both parties.

In a related story, the Financial Times reported that Poland’s banking sector is bracing itself for a $2.5bn hit as the fallout from the Swiss franc’s appreciation continues to hurt the country’s lenders. Seven of the country’s largest banks could see their combined pre-tax profit fall by more than a quarter, rating agency Moody’s said, under a government plan to force them to convert Swiss franc mortgages to Polish zloty.

The European Central Bank’s quantitative easing programme risks fuelling house price bubbles in several countries, according to new research, as investors pour cash into real estate, the Financial Times reported. Germany, Norway and the UK are judged most at risk because ultra-low interest rates and bond yields have fuelled rapid house price growth, said the report by Moody’s Analytics. Anna Zabrodzka, the author, said rising prices and the ECB’s €60bn-a-month asset-buying programme have caused “the risk of house price bubbles” to “resurface”.

The main Irish banks have been upgraded by Standard & Poors, with Bank of Ireland being raised to investment grade, the Irish Times reported. The ratings agency has said preprovision profitability for Irish banks has improved on the back of expanding net interest margins and that it expects the sector’s shift to lower risk and a stable competitive landscape to be enduring.

Alexis Tsipras should never have hired Yanis Varoufakis as his finance minister, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Or he should have listened to him, and kept him on. But instead the Greek prime minister chose the worst of all options. He followed Mr Varoufakis’ advice of rejecting the offer of the creditors — until last week.