Headlines

It is unlikely that the fifth and final bill completing the insolvency framework – a set of laws offering protection to distressed borrowers – will be forwarded to the House plenum by March 19, when the suspension of tougher foreclosure legislation expires, House Finance committee chairman Nicolas Papadopoulos said on Wednesday, Cyprus Mail reported. Committee-level discussion of the fifth bill, which relates to the insolvency of natural persons, started in the morning in a joint session by the Finance and Interior committees.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has urged the European Commission to grant greater flexibility to Ireland in the application of budget rules to allow more “budgetary space” in October’s budget, the Irish Times reported. Minister Noonan raised the issue directly with German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble and the European Commission during two days of meetings in Brussels, at which EU finance ministers backed a proposal to grant France two extra years to meet its EU deficit targets.

Carinthia, the Austrian province on the hook for more than 10 billion euros ($10.7 billion) of Heta Asset Resolution AG’s debt, asked the federal government for credit and started preparations for potential insolvency, Bloomberg News reported. The southern province of 556,000 is asking for continued funding through the Austrian Treasury after a credit-rating cut by Moody’s Investors Service closed market access, the Carinthian government said in a statement on Tuesday.

Greece’s cash-strapped Syriza government is pressing the country’s social security funds to hand over hundreds of millions of euros immediately to ensure that pensions and civil servants’ salaries are paid this month, the Financial Times reported. The unprecedented transfer of bank deposits, which is opposed by pension and welfare funds, follows an unexpectedly sharp fall in tax revenues in January that has left the finance ministry scrambling to raise funds to make a €1.2bn loan repayment to the International Monetary Fund due by March 20.

Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin has become the latest senior Cabinet member to criticise mainstream banks over their conduct in personal insolvency cases. Mr Howlin warned banks that they must engage with customers in arrears instead of pushing towards bankruptcy, Independent.ie reported. "Not all banks are engaging as they should, and that's not good enough from the Government's perspective," he said. Mr Howlin's comments reflect a growing degree of frustration in government circles over the manner in which banks are engaging with the new insolvency regime.

Steel pensioners from Hamilton are going to court to save a key protection for retirees whose employers go bankrupt. They're rallying behind a little-known legal principle in Ontario that says amounts owed to a pension plan by a bankrupt employer become claims ranking ahead of secured creditors against some assets. A recent Superior Court decision threatens this so-called deemed trust principle by holding the trust is only created if the employer winds up its pension plans before going bankrupt.

Germany-listed Chinese shoemaker Ultrasonic AG said on Tuesday that negotiations with its lending banks have failed and that in consequence, the management board was forced to file for insolvency, Reuters reported. Frankfurt-listed Ultrasonic said in September its top executives and most of its cash reserves in China and Hong Kong had disappeared. Read more.

Talks between Greece and the institutions overseeing its bailout will start delving for the first time into technical detail here this week, eurozone finance ministers decided Monday, a sign that most of the work needed to secure desperately needed funding for Athens has yet to be done, The Wall Street Journal reported. “The real talks haven’t really started yet,” Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who presides over meetings of eurozone finance minister said after the meeting.

Portugal's Novo Banco, the bank carved out of Banco Espirito Santo after a state rescue last year, expects to sharply reduce its loss this year and return to profits in 2016, emboldened by recovering deposits and improving liquidity. Novo Banco, which the state plans to sell this year to recover 4.9 billion euros in rescue loans injected in August, reported on Monday a 468-million-euro ($510 million) loss for August-December because of provisions and one-off charges.

Fresh from putting the squeeze on banks to behave themselves, regulators are scrutinising so-called shadow banks, alternative lenders such as investment funds doing big business out of countries like Ireland, the Irish Times reported. The third-biggest shadow banking market in the euro zone behind Luxembourg and the Netherlands, Ireland has amassed €2.9 trillion of assets, according to data from the European Central Bank, by way of business-friendly laws and tax exemptions.