Headlines

An estimated 114 building and construction-related companies have gone to the wall in Canberra since the start of last year, leaving behind more than $80 million in debts, Australian Securities and Investments Commission data has revealed, The Canberra Times reported. With the downturn in the building, home improvement and renovation sector expected to worsen as public servants remain uncertain about their futures, ACT insolvency specialists say the snowballing "tsunami" of economic pain documented in wind-up notices on the ASIC website won’t end soon.

Britain’s antitrust authorities said on Friday that they expected to open a formal investigation into the country’s retail banking industry, citing potential barriers to competition that include the control of a national network of branches by four big banks that offer free banking to many customers, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. If the inquiry proceeds as expected, it could challenge the dominant role of Britain’s big four: the Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Barclays.

Creditors of a bankrupt Spanish motorway business delayed a meeting to decide whether to liquidate it on Friday, two sources close to the talks said, giving the government more time to find a way to prevent billions in debt going on to its books, Reuters reported. After more than a year of negotiations between ministries, banks and construction companies, the government has yet to find a way of saving nine bankrupt motorways, without debt of more than 4 billion euros ($5.4 billion) hitting its deficit.

Espirito Santo International, one of the holding companies of Portugal’s Espirito Santo banking family, filed for creditor protection in Luxembourg on Friday as the business empire’s problems also spilled over to Angola, where the central bank said the local unit of Banco Espirito Santo would need more capital to deal with bad loans, the International New York Times reported.

European markets recovered quickly from the spasm caused by the funding crisis that has gripped Portugal’s Banco Espírito Santo. But the episode demonstrated investor nervousness over how far shares and bonds in peripheral European banks had rallied, and shows the market remains on the lookout for anything that could trigger a resumption of the eurozone crisis that has abated but not been finally resolved, the Financial Times reported.

The government fund that owns a majority stake in Malaysia Airlines is increasingly leaning toward taking the company private, after the carrier lost a second plane in five months, according to people familiar with the matter. Khazanah Nasional Bhd., Malaysia's state investment fund and holder of a 69% stake in flag-carrier operator Malaysian Airline System Bhd., had already been considering a purchase of the rest of the company, along with other restructuring proposals, even before a full flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in Ukraine on Thursday.

Greece’s return to bond markets after a four-year exile hasn’t convinced economists it can avoid a third bailout. Six out of 10 economists in a Bloomberg News survey said Greece will need to top up the 240 billion euros ($325 billion) of loans received from Europe and the International Monetary Fund since 2010, when it lost access to bond markets. The IMF forecasts Greece will have a 12.6 billion-euro financing gap next year.

Creditors of a bankrupt Spanish motorway business will meet on Friday to decide whether to liquidate it, piling pressure on the government to come up with a way to avoid billions of debt from nine failed toll road companies ending up on its books, Reuters reported. After more than a year of negotiations between ministries, banks and construction companies, the government has yet to find a way of saving the motorway businesses without debt of over 4 billion euros ($5.4 billion) hitting its finances.

Austria and the World Bank may end up in court over the planned wipe-out of junior creditors of nationalised Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International , the Austrian finance minister said, the Irish Times reported. The Austrian government was “surprised” to see that the World Bank, through its International Bank for Reconstruction and Development unit, owns €150 million of subordinated Hypo Alpe bonds, Michael Spindelegger told Austrian state radio ORF today. The Washington-based lender’s claim that it can’t be expropriated is being reviewed, he said.

With the latest round of sanctions against Russia, the United States Treasury Department said it had “increased the cost of economic isolation for key Russian firms,” like the state oil company Rosneft and the banking arm of the natural gas giant Gazprom, the International New York Times reported. The isolation, though, does not extend to the companies’ growing reliance on Chinese lending, a trend in the Russian natural resources industry that will blunt the effect of sanctions aimed at the finances of Russian oil companies. Energy companies form the backbone of the Russian economy.