Headlines

Only a week ago, officials on both sides of the negotiating table believed that a solution to Greece’s agonising and excruciating stand-off with its creditors was mercifully at hand, the Financial Times reported. In a late-night meeting on the 13th floor of the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission’s president, presented a five-page plan for Greece that had been hammered out days earlier among Europe’s most powerful leaders in private talks at the chancellery in Berlin.

The number of Canadians who can’t pay their debts and are being forced into insolvency is on the rise for the first time since the recession, according to a report by CIBC, The Canadian Press reported. The bank says the cumulative number of insolvencies rose by 1.2 per cent in the six-month period ended in February. The overall increase came as personal bankruptcies fell by 4.7 per cent. However the number of proposals, where consumers negotiate to repay only a portion of their debt, rose by no less than nine per cent.

Ukraine’s largest creditors say they are deeply concerned by the country’s declaration that it may stop making debt payments unless investors agree to a restructuring plan, as a crucial deadline looms over negotiations, the Financial Times reported. Talks between the two sides have stalled in recent weeks with both accusing the other of intransigence.

Can misbehaving bankers be reined in? In the wake of seemingly endless banking scandals, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, promised on June 10th to do just that. “The age of irresponsibility is over,” Mr Carney declared. The bank, the Financial Conduct Authority (a fellow regulator) and the Treasury hope to adopt and export a new model for regulating scandal-ridden fixed income, currency and commodities (“FICC”) markets. Recent wrongdoing in this area includes the rigging of LIBOR, a benchmark interest rate, and the manipulation of currency markets.

Renhe Commercial appears to have a well-fortified business model: It builds air raid shelters across China for the government, outfitting them as underground shopping malls for use during peacetime, the International New York Times reported. But even that strategy has not been enough to protect the company from the fallout from China’s property market slump. Like many Chinese developers, Renhe is struggling with financial losses and debt, and it has been looking for other sources of income.

The media in Austria's larger northern neighbor once envied the country's economic success, dubbing it ''the better Germany.'' Things are different now, Bloomberg News reported. Since that title was applied in a Stern magazine article in 2005, annual GDP growth in Austria has slid downward, to 0.1 percent last year from well above 2 percent then. Having outpaced the euro area's biggest economy for most of the past 15 years, the Alpine republic is now lagging behind Germany, also its most important export market.

Ukraine could stop paying its sovereign creditors within weeks if they do not agree to a debt restructuring, the country’s finance minister said on Wednesday, offering a provocative option over one of the country’s economic problems amid signs of a deadlock in negotiations, the Financial Times reported. The government in Kiev and the International Monetary Fund have set the end of this month as a target to agree on a restructuring of Ukraine’s $70bn in sovereign debt aimed at saving it more than $15bn in debt payments over the next four years.

Signs of a possible breakthrough on the Greek impasse emerged from Brussels on Wednesday evening, amid reports that Germany was privately in favour of providing a staggered aid deal to Greece, the Irish Times reported. Despite indications earlier in the day that negotiations on Greece would not take place on the fringes of yesterday’s EU-Latin America summit, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras met German chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday night.

Economists at the European Central Bank have claimed that government austerity works, saying policies of the sort imposed by the troika on weaker euro-area member states lessen the longer-term pain associated with high levels of government debt, the Financial Times reported. The paper comes at a time of heightened tension between Greece and its international creditors, with the Syriza-led government rebelling against attempts to reshape its economy, and highlights differences within the troika on how best to handle the ongoing crisis.

South Sudan is running out of money, which along with a civil war and mass food shortages is putting the world’s youngest country at risk of becoming its youngest failed state, The Wall Street Journal reported. In the past two years, the U.S. government has spent more than $1 billion to try to help stave off escalating violence in South Sudan, government figures show. Other Western countries have also given massive amounts.