Headlines

Banks have secured greater protection for loans to companies in a landmark Supreme Court ruling, the Irish Times reported. The court’s unanimous judgment means Bank of Ireland gets priority over preferential creditors, including the Revenue, which is owed €600,000, in the liquidation of companies in the Belgard Motors Group. As the bank is owed €16.2 million, no other creditor will get paid.

The Chinese government struggled in vain Wednesday to prevent the distress in the country’s stock markets from spreading, as it openly fought market forces it has pledged to give a larger role, The Wall Street Journal reported. Early Wednesday, the Chinese authorities rushed out another raft of emergency measures to halt what is turning into a crisis of confidence in leaders’ ability to steer the economy. But before the day was over the equities selloff had spilled into offshore trading in the Chinese yuan and worsened a drop in global commodity prices.

Greece formally requested a new three-year bailout from the eurozone’s rescue fund and promised to implement pension and tax reforms as early as next week as it sought to convince creditors it was serious about a deal, the Financial Times reported. After being told by eurozone leaders it had to reach an agreement by the end of Sunday or face exit from the euro, Athens said it would also set out in detail a “comprehensive and specific reform agenda” by Thursday.

George Osborne, Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, fresh from a decisive election victory, pledged to recast the country’s economy by cutting welfare spending, lowering the tax bill for workers and tackling low productivity, the Irish Times reported. “The Budget will take Britain from a low-wage, high-tax, high-welfare economy, to the higher-wage, lower-tax, lower-welfare country we intend to create, ” Mr Osborne said.

Russia is slouching through a recession, and Barvikha Luxury Village — a neatly groomed shopping mall housing brands like Prada and Gucci as well as two car dealerships, Bentley and Ferrari/Maserati — is deserted most days, the International New York Times reported. With the economy reeling from the oil-price crash and Western economic sanctions over Ukraine, the ruble has sunk precipitously, inflation is up sharply and real wages are shrinking for the first time in years, forcing Russians — even the wealthiest — to make do with less. President Vladimir V.

Bhushan Steel Ltd (BSL) has received lenders' approval for long-term restructuring of about Rs 30,000 crore loans under a scheme of Reserve Bank of India. The Joint Lenders Forum (JLF) has agreed to extend the loans of BSL for a tenure of 25 years under the RBI's scheme for long-term structuring of loans in line with cash flows. "About 70 per cent of the lenders have approved the scheme and by the end of this month it should get closed", Bhushan Steel Chief Finance Officer (CFO) Nittin Johari told the Press Trust of India.

The National Guarantee Fund, a compensation vehicle for investors, has admitted it does not currently have the resources to handle a jump in claims from the collapse of BBY, and is seeking to rectify the situation, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. The Securities Exchanges Guarantee Corporation, the fund's administrator, is considering setting up a panel of law firms to assist with, and expedite potential claims.

Far more than simply a market crisis, the Chinese leadership views turmoil on the Shanghai stock exchange as a potential security threat to the regime, The Wall Street Journal reported. That helps explain the barrage of measures unleashed by financial authorities to counter a sudden market downturn that threatened to shake public confidence in the government.

As negotiations between Greece and its creditors stumbled toward breakdown, culminating in a sound rejection on Sunday by Greek voters of the conditions demanded in exchange for a financial lifeline, a vintage photo resurfaced on the Internet, the International New York Times reported. It shows Hermann Josef Abs, head of the Federal Republic of Germany’s delegation in London on Feb. 27, 1953, signing the agreement that effectively cut the country’s debts to its foreign creditors in half. It is an image that still resonates today.

The Chinese construction company building the unfinished $3.5 billion Baha Mar resort in the Bahamas on Tuesday accused the developer of mismanaging the project's design and not securing adequate financing, Reuters reported. China Construction America (CCA) has been blamed for the delays that caused the Baha Mar project to file for bankruptcy protection late last month in a Delaware court. But CCA said the developer of the project replaced the mega resort's principal architect after construction began and had more than 1,300 change orders for construction contractors.