Headlines

South Korea’s government is fighting to address the dangers of the nation’s fast-rising household debt burden — even as critics accuse it of stoking the credit boom through deregulation aimed at boosting the housing market, the Financial Times reported. Economists have raised fears over the country’s heavy household debt, which has risen steadily since the late 1990s to more than 160 per cent of disposable incomes at the end of last year — one of the highest levels of any developed nation.

Japan’s drift back toward deflation, two years after launching a radical monetary policy experiment to cure the affliction, underscores the continuing difficulties in pulling the world’s third-largest economy out of its long slump, The Wall Street Journal reported. The government said Friday its most closely watched price gauge was flat in February from a year earlier, far below the 2% target that the central bank had aimed to hit by this spring. It was the lowest level since May 2013 for the consumer price index, excluding fresh food prices and the effects of a tax increase.

Sierra Leone-focused mining company African Minerals has appointed administrators, it said on Thursday, having being battered by a rout in iron ore prices and costs related to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Reuters reported. After failing to repay its lender and partner in the Tonkolili iron ore project Shandong Iron and Steel Group, African Minerals has appointed Neville Kahn and Ian Wormleighton of Deloitte LLP as joint administrators of the company and of its subsidiary African Minerals Engineering Limited.

Growing desperation and technical changes to entry rules on Serbia’s border prompted tens of thousands of Kosovars to try to leave the former Serb province in late 2014, the Financial Times reported. Even as tighter controls have curbed the outflow from one of the continent’s poorest countries, the worsening economic situation that forced them to leave remains. Despite 15 years of western tutelage and billions of dollars in investment, many want to leave a country dominated by a small elite with close links to organised crime.

President Dilma Rousseff's government denied on Wednesday that it is looking to strike a "grand bargain" with Brazilian construction and engineering firms implicated in the kickback scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. With Brazil facing recession, the government is keen to limit economic fallout by reaching leniency deals with some of the 24 companies under investigation that have halted projects and laid off workers after Petrobras stopped paying them.

Athens’ hope that it could alleviate a mounting cash crisis by seeking the return of €1.2bn in disputed funds from its bank rescue were dashed when the government was informed it had no legal claim on the money, the Financial Times reported. The funds were part of an original €48.2bn in bonds injected by eurozone creditors into a fund to recapitalise Greece’s stricken banks in 2012. Some €10.9bn was left unused, of which €1.2bn was in cash.

With the fight to keep Greece in the euro now in its sixth year, everyone is running out of patience. More importantly, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government in Athens is running out of money, Bloomberg News reported. While bond yields suggest investors expect Greece to stay in the euro, economists such as UniCredit Bank AG’s Erik Nielsen say it may be just a matter of time before he’s forced to print a new currency. Adopting the euro was always supposed to be a one-way ticket, so there is no legal precedent or political roadmap for an exit.

The Hypo Alpe Adria saga ripples on. It claimed its first victim last week, the tiny mortgage lender Duesseldorfer Hypothekenbank, Forbes reported. A number of German banks and insurance companies have admitted that they stand to lose significant amounts on Heta bonds: most recently, the German insurer Talanx said that losses on Heta holdings estimated to be “in the high tens of millions” would cost it “less than 10m EUR”, and the Landesbank Helaba confirmed exposure of 85m EUR, writedown of which would cost an estimated 25m EUR. Both of these estimates look too low to me.

China’s central bank said on Wednesday that banks should step up financing support for farms in the latest bid to bolster that vulnerable sector and the overall economy, the International New York Times reported. The banking industry should “enhance the availability of financing for the agricultural sector at an affordable cost,” the central bank said in a news release. Policy makers face challenges in channeling bank loans into the cash-starved farming sector.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has decided to cease regulating solicitors who act as insolvency practitioners despite opposition from the profession, Accountancy Age reported. A consultation was held on SRA regulation of solicitor insolvency practitioners in November last year in which IPs were opposed to the plans. There are currently 129 solicitors operating as insolvency practitioners.