Headlines

A Spanish court has rejected a government proposal to rescue two of nine bankrupt motorways, increasing the likelihood the toll roads will go into liquidation and the state will have to assume their debt of more than 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion), Reuters reported. A Madrid commercial court said on Feb. 24 the terms of the rescue package were not legal and the Ocana-La Roda and R4 roads would now enter liquidation, court documents showed. The government will appeal the decision, a government spokeswoman said. Ferrovial, a major shareholder in both roads, declined to comment.

Two brothers have lost their bid to restrain receivers selling their assets after Allied Irish Banks obtained a €17.6 million judgment against them, the Irish Times reported. Mr Justice Brian McGovern rejected arguments by Paul and Gerard Dormer the €17.6 million judgment granted against them in March 2014 should be vacated due to AIB’s alleged failure to properly complete a January 2014 settlement agreement under which they had agreed to judgment provided specific conditions were met by AIB.

It may go down as one of the least effective bail-outs the world has ever seen. Not Greece’s, but Ukraine’s, The Economist reported. Just two weeks ago Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), promised Ukraine $40 billion over four years—an impressive-sounding sum for a country whose GDP may soon shrink to $70 billion. Since then, however, Ukraine’s economic crisis has got much worse. The currency has hit new lows: a dollar now buys around 30 hryvnia (see chart).

The four of five bills comprising the insolvency framework will not be tabled to the House Plenary today, as the Budgetary and Interior Committees could not conclude the discussion of the four bills, Chairman of the Budgetary Affairs Committee Nicolas Papadopoulos has said, the Famagusta Gazette reported.

Businessman Sean Quinn’s family have appealed to a High Court judge not to grant the DPP a second deferral of the hearing of their action. They allege they are not liable for about €2.34 billion loans advanced by the former Anglo Irish Bank to Quinn companies, the Irish Times reported. The DPP says there is a “clear threat” to the fairness of criminal proceedings against former Anglo chairman Sean Fitzpatrick, due to open before a jury on April 13th, from the Quinns’ civil action, due to open at the Commercial Court on April 14th.

Of all the challenges Greece has faced in recent years, prodding its citizens to pay their taxes has been one of the most difficult, The Wall Street Journal reported. At the end of 2014, Greeks owed their government about €76 billion ($86 billion) in unpaid taxes accrued over decades, though mostly since 2009. The government says most of that has been lost to insolvency and only €9 billion can be recovered.

Rising property prices have not yet lifted a significant proportion of Irish homeowners out of negative equity, according to a new report from the Central Bank, the Irish Times reported. In its latest Household Credit Market Report, the Central Bank presents data which shows that over 50 per cent of mortgages taken out in 2007 were still innegative equity at June 2014. Those who bought in 2005 and 2006 are also likely to still be underwater, with Central Bank showing that approximately 40 and 45 per cent of these home buyers, respectively, are also in negative equity.

Switzerland refused a request for assistance to help bring prosecutions here on the basis of the leaked HSBC Geneva banking files, according to the Irish Revenue Commissioners. Revenue chairman Niall Cody has also told the Dáil Committee of Public Accounts that 13 people are the subject of ongoing investigations arising from the Swiss data, with the amount in their accounts involving a maximum of $14.83 million.

A deepening power crisis that has triggered almost daily outages across South Africa, hitting key industries as well as households, has forced the government to sharply downgrade its growth forecast for the year, the Financial Times reported. Nhlanhla Nene, the finance minister, highlighted energy supply as the government’s critical challenge as he projected that growth for the year would be 2 per cent, down from the 2.5 per cent the Treasury forecast in October.

Ukraine’s economic woes deepened Wednesday as its central bank drastically limited access to foreign currency in an effort to halt the hryvnia’s free fall, and Russia threatened to halt natural-gas deliveries, The Wall Street Journal reported. The hryvnia’s decline has accelerated in recent days, in part because of delays in parliament on legislative measures needed to unlock financing from the International Monetary Fund, as well as continued fighting in eastern Ukraine with Russia-backed separatists.