Headlines

Russia’s economy contracted 2 per cent last quarter, prime minister Dmitry Medvedev said, saying the country faced unprecedented challenges from a plunge in oil prices and sanctions imposed over Ukraine, the Irish Times reported. The downturn was “most acute” at end-2014 and the start of this year, Mr Medvedev told lawmakers in Moscow. The decline in gross domestic product is the first since a contraction in 2009. The economy of the world’s largest energy exporter is entering a recession after an almost 50 per cent crash in oil prices and the ruble’s worst crisis since 1998.

Bookmaker Ladbrokes Ireland, is seeking High Court protection from its creditors and warns it will have to cut jobs in a bid to rescue the loss-making business, the Irish Times reported. London-listed Ladbrokes, said on Tuesday that the High Court has appointed Ken Fennell as interim examiner to three Irish subsidiaries, Ladbroke (Ireland), Ladbroke Leisure and Dara Properties. The court has also granted them protection, effectively barring creditors from enforcing any debts against the three companies for up to three months.

The troubled Chinese property developer, Kaisa Group, defaulted on its overseas debt, a situation that could make Western investors more wary of the country’s real estate market, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Once a darling of global money managers, the developer, with its trail of financial problems, is now a case study for the risks of investing in China. For years, big investors plowed money into Kaisa, attracted by the tempting returns and the country’s soaring real estate market.

It’s still possible that Greece can remain in the eurozone—though that is no longer the base case for many policy makers, The Wall Street Journal reported. At the very least, most fear the situation is going to get much, worse before it gets any better. No one now expects a deal to unlock Greek bailout funding at this week’s meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Riga—originally set as the final deadline for a deal. The new final, final deadline is now said to be a summit on May 11.

Greece’s government issued a decree Monday requiring public bodies such as state-owned companies and public pension funds to transfer their cash reserves to the central bank as the country’s cash reserves continue to dry up, The Wall Street Journal reported. The decree, published in the government gazette late Monday, came as no surprise, the government having telegraphed the move last week. But it still represents evidence of an escalating cash squeeze amid renewed concerns of Greek default.

The European Central Bank has urged the Central Bank of Ireland to accelerate the sale of sovereign bonds it holds after Anglo Irish Bank’s collapse, the Irish Times reported. The ECB welcomed moves by Dame Street to dispose of the bonds held after the Government’s move in 2013 to liquidate Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, Anglo’s successor, and scrap promissory notes issued to fund its public rescue. In its 2014 annual report, however, the ECB said the Irish authorities should speed up the process.

Britain is not usually considered the wild frontier of the oil industry, but it is proving to be a tough environment for what had been a fast-growing engineering and construction company called Petrofac, the International New York Times reported. The company on Monday said that it was likely to incur a deeper loss on an $800 million natural gas plant that it has been building for the French oil giant Total on the Shetland Islands north of Scotland. The company’s stock price dropped about 10 percent in trading on Monday.

The plight of South Korea’s 6m contract workers and the polarisation of the 18m-strong workforce goes to the heart of the country’s reform challenge, the Financial Times reported. President Park Geun-hye has put the labour market at the core of structural reforms aimed at reviving economic growth. South Korea’s economy grew just 0.4 per cent in the last three months of last year from the previous quarter — the slowest pace for two years. “Our economy is at a crossroads,” she said recently in a meeting with business leaders.

Lawmakers in Cyprus passed key insolvency laws designed to open the taps for more international bailout cash, The Wall Street Journal reported. The vote makes it possible to operate foreclosure laws that international creditors have demanded as a condition for extending more loans to Cyprus. Recession, high unemployment and declining incomes have produced defaults on more than half of all private loans. The new laws should make it easier for banks to demand payment or seize assets, thereby reducing the banks’ own liabilities.

By the standards of his frenzied schedule here last week, the meeting on Friday between Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, and Lee C. Buchheit, the dean of international debt lawyers, was a quiet one, the International New York Times reported. There was none of the media scrum that had followed Mr. Varoufakis around town during the semiannual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, as he paid calls on the I.M.F. chief, Christine Lagarde; the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi; the United States Treasury secretary, Jacob J.