Headlines

Greece alone would be responsible for winding down any problem bank this year and cannot count on help from other European bank resolution funds, the head of Germany's financial watchdog, soon to lead the EU's bank resolution authority, said on Wednesday. "For everything up to Dec. 31, the Greek national resolution authority is responsible," Elke Koenig told a journalist briefing at supervisor Bafin's headquarters. Tensions remain high as Greece, the EU and the ECB wrestle over how deal with the Mediterranean country's massive debt.

Eurozone finance ministers failed to narrow their deep differences with Greece on Wednesday over how to keep the country from running out of money as it tries to revise the terms of its bailout, the International New York Times reported. After holding more than five hours of talks here with Yanis Varoufakis, the combative finance minister from the newly elected anti-austerity government in Athens, the ministers said they would need to meet again on Monday.

The accusations of corruption at Brazil’s state-controlled petroleum giant Petrobras have already led to a political scandal and a change in management. Now, the problems are threatening other Brazilian companies and may even tip the country into recession, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. It would be hard to overstate Petrobras’s importance in Brazil.

A group of Malaysian banks have threatened to put the 1Malaysia Development Bhd. in default if it fails to repay a 2 billion ringgit ($550 million) loan by the deadline at the end of the month, in a rare case of the country’s local banks taking on one of the country’s biggest state investment firms, The Wall Street Journal reported. 1MDB, whose advisory board is chaired by Prime Minister Najib Razak , has already twice delayed repaying the loan.

Struggling telecom startup Mobilicity has filed an application to participate in the upcoming federal spectrum auction, but the company’s precarious financial condition could preclude it from facing off with rival Wind Mobile Corp. for the coveted licences, the Financial Post reported. Mobilicity, which has been operating under court-supervised creditor protection since September 2013, submitted a refundable deposit after scrambling to obtain $65-million in debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing days before Industry Canada’s Jan.

Target Canada has reached an agreement with its landlords on the sale of leases for the closing of Target retail stores, CBC.ca reported. Documents filed with an Ontario court say both sides have agreed to a court-appointed monitor to supervise the sale, which shifts control away from Target Canada. The retailer has also set May 15 as the deadline for wrapping up the sale of the leases, with an final date set for June 30. If a lease isn't sold by the June deadline, then the rights will be returned to the landlord, according to the documents.

The US has urged Athens and its eurozone creditors to strike a deal over Greece’s financial future, underlining international concern about the global economic fallout from a prolonged stand-off over the country’s bailout, the Financial Times reported. Jack Lew, US Treasury secretary, called on both sides to be “practical and pragmatic” in seeking to resolve their differences and warned that a prolonged confrontation risked destabilising the EU. The Obama administration has intervened regularly in the five-year-old eurozone crisis, particularly at its 2011-12 peak.

The government is optimistic that the troika of lenders will in the next few days give the nod to the fifth and last bill of the insolvency framework, finance minister Harris Georgiades told MPs on Monday, Cyprus Mail reported. The bill in question regulates which mortgaged primary homes are exempted, under certain conditions, from repossession, as well as the thorny issue of guarantors to bad loans. “Progress has been made in terms of the consultations and clarifications requested [by the troika], which we have given to them,” Georgiades said.

US holders of defaulted Argentine bonds have stepped up their campaign for full repayment of their loans by detailing how 14 senior Argentine officials experienced “dramatic and often unexplained increases” in their personal wealth during service in the Kirchner administrations, the Irish Times reported.

Palliser Oil & Gas is seeking creditor protection under the CCAA act, it said yesterday, as the junior oil and gas company failed to repay its oustanding debts. The company, in a statement released after market close Monday, said its board has determined that it is in the best interests of shareholders to file for creditor protection on February 12 under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCCAA). The decision comes after Palliser received a notice from lender National Bank of Canada that the company's $40 million in debt must be repaid in full by February 6.