Headlines

Global banks from Deutsche Bank AG to Credit Suisse Group AG are urging international regulators to rethink a liquidity rule they say risks harming the market for repurchase agreements and pushing up governments’ borrowing costs, Bloomberg News reported. Draft plans from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, aimed at ensuring banks obtain more of their funding from stable sources, also risk penalizing lenders that invest in securitized debt, according to consultation responses submitted by the industry.

U.S. and Canadian customers of failed Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox have agreed to settle their proposed class action lawsuits that alleged the company defrauded them of hundreds of millions of dollars, Reuters reported. The class action plaintiffs agreed to support a plan by Sunlot Holdings to buy the shuttered exchange and accept their share of bitcoins still held by Mt. Gox, according to a statement and court filings. Mt.

More than two-thirds of long-term mortgage arrears in the buy-to-let sector stem from cheap tracker loans rather than high-cost variable-rate mortgages, the Irish Times reported. The finding, contained in a study by the Central Bank, is likely to reignite concern that a significant portion of property investors are strategically defaulting on their mortgage loans in hope of gaining concessions from lenders.

The number of people going insolvent in England and Wales edged up by 2.5% in the first quarter of this year, as experts warned there is still "no light at the end of the tunnel" for many families despite the recovering economy, the Belfast Telegraph reported. Some 24,931 individual insolvencies were recorded over the latest three-month period, which is 2.5% higher than the fourth quarter of 2013 but is still 0.3% down on the same period a year ago. A growing number of people going bankrupt helped to push up the figures.

Austria's Verbund has offered to sell its stake in troubled Italian energy group Sorgenia as part of a debt restructuring plan with creditor banks, a spokeswoman for the state-owned utility said on Monday. "It's about sharing the burden... We are waiting for offers," the spokeswoman told Reuters. Loss-making Sorgenia, 52 percent controlled by Italian holding company CIR, has run up 1.8 billion euros ($2.5 billion) of debt - 600 million euros of which must be cleared to keep it afloat in the short term.

Britain’s major lenders will have to demonstrate they can weather a brutal housing market slump under Bank of England stress tests to be unveiled on Tuesday, the Financial Times reported. The BoE’s Prudential Regulation Authority will disclose details of its scenarios alongside a broader EU-wide exercise aimed at gauging the health of major banks. Under the PRA’s scenario declines of about 35 per cent in residential property prices are expected to be triggered by a sharp rise in interest rates from the current 0.5 per cent level.

Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott has gone from student boxing champion at Oxford University to a combative defender of conservative values during two decades in Parliament, The Wall Street Journal reported. Now, he is preparing for a federal budget on May 13 that represents one of the biggest battles of his leadership yet. In his sights are generous government welfare programs for Australians, which the ruling Liberal Party argues are increasingly unaffordable as the boost to Treasury coffers from a decadelong mining boom fades. Mr.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi told German lawmakers that a quantitative-easing program isn’t imminent and is relatively unlikely for now, according to a euro-area official present at the meeting, Bloomberg reported. The central bank stands ready to embark on QE if needed, Draghi said at the gathering attended by lawmakers from parties that form the nation’s coalition government, the official told reporters yesterday. The person declined to be identified because the meeting in Koenigswinter, Germany, was private.

German PV installer and distributor Wagner & Co Solar has filed for insolvency in a court in Germany, PV Tech reported. The company is the latest in a line of firms whose fortunes have fallen with the drop in domestic demand for solar power. “Unfortunately, the market for solar power and heating systems has not as developed positively in recent months, as we had assumed…in our restructuring plan,” a statement from the company said. According to the firm, sustained losses meant it could no longer guarantee that it could fund its everyday operations without structural changes.

Britain has blocked plans by state-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland to pay bonuses worth double an employee's fixed salary, adding to the pressure on banks to rein in pay. Banks across Europe have come under fire from the public, shareholders and politicians for extravagantly rewarding staff at a time of austerity that was brought on in part by the reckless lending of some financial groups. British Business Secretary Vince Cable this week wrote to banks and other big companies warning them to cut out excessive rewards or face tighter rules.