Headlines

If all goes according to plan, early next year Commerzbank will pay a dividend for the first time since the bank was engulfed by the crisis, the Irish Times reported on a Financial Times story. That would be a symbolic moment in the rehabilitation of the bank in which the German government was forced to invest €18.2 billion during the turmoil after the Lehman Brothers collapse. It would also be a welcome change of fortune for Commerzbank’s shareholders, who have seen their holdings diluted by capital raisings.

Banks have paid billions. Regulators and prosecutors have extracted guilty pleas from financial institutions. Dozens of employees have been fired, and at least one chief executive has lost his job. Now, on Tuesday, the first trader in the sprawling, half-decade-old investigation into the rigging of global benchmark interest rates will go on trial in Southwark Crown Court, the International New York Times reported. The British authorities have charged Tom Hayes, a 35-year-old former trader from Citigroup and UBS with eight counts of conspiracy to commit fraud. Mr.

Bulldozers lie abandoned on city streets. Exhausted surgeons operate through the night. And the wealthy bail out broke police departments. A nearly bankrupt Greece is taking desperate measures to preserve cash. Absent a last-minute deal with its creditors, the nation will run out of money early next month. Two weeks ago, Greece nearly defaulted on a debt payment of 750 million euros, or about $825 million, to the International Monetary Fund. For the rest of this month, Greece should be able to cover daily cash deficits of around 100 million euros, government ministers say.

Some 300,000 people with standard variable rate (SVR) home loans look set to benefit from reduced monthly mortgage payments from July, the Irish Times reported. Minister for Finance Michael Noonan met this week with the country’s main six lenders – AIB, Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB, Ulster Bank, KBC and ACC – to discuss “the comparatively high standard variable rates currently being charged by the banks”. Mr Noonan said there was agreement from all lenders that customers should have access to more competitively priced mortgages.

Late-night negotiations between the Greek, French and German government leaders ended without any sign of a breakthrough that will unlock bailout funds and ensure Greece’s future in the euro region, Bloomberg News reported. With time running out for a deal to free up the remaining 7.2 billion-euro ($8 billion) tranche of aid, talks between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, President Francois Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel broke up shortly before 1 a.m. on Friday in the Latvian capital Riga with the three agreeing only to stay in close contact.

A High Court judge has permitted the family of businessman Seán Quinn to proceed with claims in their forthcoming legal action that some €2.34 billion loans by Anglo Irish Bank to various Quinn companies were made for the unlawful purpose of propping up the bank’s share price, the Irish Times reported. However, the Quinns cannot continue to pursue those aspects of their claim alleging the loans are unenforceable, Mr Justice Robert Haughton ruled.

Struggling companies will be given a second chance to improve their financial situation under new rules on insolvency approved by MEPs on 20 May. Every year 1.7 million jobs are lost in the EU due to companies going bankrupt. Under the new legislation on cross-border insolvencies, companies in financial difficulties but otherwise sound are given another opportunity to turn the situation around. The plans also include measures to help firms before they go bust.

Liquidating one of the Irish banks was “not an option” on the night of the bank guarantee in September 29th 2008, the former Central Bank of Ireland governor John Hurley told the Oireachtas Banking Inquiry Thursday. “I would not have advised any government to take that risk,” Mr Hurley said, adding that other options were discussed, including nationalisation. “You were not going to take such a risk with the economy.” In evidence given to the inquiry in January, the current governor Patrick Honohan, said Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide should have been liquidated by the State.

Research by ComRes and R3, the insolvency trade body, has found that the UK’s insolvency profession helped around 6,700 businesses continue trading in some way after entering formal insolvency. This, R3 says, amounts to 41% of formal insolvencies, economia reported. In total, the profession helped 10,400 businesses continue operating, either through formal insolvency or through working with a practitioner to avoid insolvency. These businesses employed approximately 540,000 after they received support.

The upheaval is deepening around the German maker of a controversial new smart gun, The Washington Post reported. Armatix, based near Munich, is undergoing a “corporate restructuring,” according to a statement Thursday from a company spokesman. Details were not immediately available from German courts, but the spokesman said the move was “not an insolvency proceeding.” Financial records reported to German authorities show Armatix has recorded more than 14 million euros in losses since 2011.