Headlines

Europe’s biggest financial rulemaking spree since the creation of its single market more than 20 years ago reached its finale on Tuesday with the adoption of a slew of landmark reforms designed to make banks safer and financial markets more transparent, the Financial Times reported. It marks the climax of a fraught four-year drive to end the era of taxpayer bailouts and fuse together control of eurozone banks under a banking union.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has pledged to do “something” for struggling middle-income earners in the budget despite indications yesterday from his own department that a further €2 billion adjustment would be required to hit deficit targets next year, the Irish Times reported. Speaking at the Oireachtas Finance Committee after the publication of the Department of Finance’s latest Stability Pact Update (SPU), Mr Noonan said he intended to widen income tax bands to take more people out of the higher tax bracket as soon as the State could afford it.

Portugal plans to implement budget measures worth 1.4 billion euros ($1.94 billion) to narrow its budget deficit and meet a target set for 2015, Bloomberg News reported. The measures represent about 0.8 percent of gross domestic product and include cutting costs at government ministries and reducing the number of public sector workers through retirement and agreements to end employment contracts, Finance Minister Maria Luis Albuquerque said in Lisbon today. The government will continue to charge an extraordinary contribution on energy companies in 2015.

China's biggest airline by revenue warned it expects to report a first-quarter net loss, the first sign that the recent weakening of the nation's currency is impacting a major industry, The Wall Street Journal reported. China Southern Airlines Co. said late Tuesday it will likely post a net loss of between 300 million yuan ($48.2 million) and 350 million yuan for the quarter through March due to foreign exchange losses. In the same quarter last year, it posted a net profit of 57 million yuan.

Japan’s population slid for a third year with the proportion of people over the age of 65 rising to a record, underscoring the challenge the world’s most-indebted economy faces in financing its aging society, Bloomberg News reported. The population declined by 0.17 percent to 127.3 million as of Oct. 1, as the country maintains one of the world’s lowest birth rate. People age 65 or older made up one fourth of the total, the highest-ever percentage, as postwar baby boomers head into retirement, the Internal Affairs Ministry said on its website yesterday.

British pawnbroker Albemarle & Bond will be bought out of administration by investment fund Promethean Investments in a deal which will save the majority of its stores and 628 jobs, administrators said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The acquisition comes a day after Britain's biggest pawnbroker H&T said it was ending talks regarding the possible acquisition of some of A&B's assets. Administrator PwC said in a statement that the deal with Promethean involved it taking on 128 A&B stores out of 187, and 628 staff out of a workforce of 809.

The management of troubled Italian lender Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA is considering raising up to €5 billion in a share sale, instead of the €3 billion previously planned, people familiar with the matter said Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The decision will need to be first approved by a board of directors in a vote that is likely to take place next week, and then it will need to be submitted for approval to the bank's shareholders. A spokesman for Monte dei Paschi declined to comment.

In the past two months, China has suffered its first domestic bond default in recent history and a series of small bankruptcies that have some investors fretting the country could face its very own “Lehman moment”, the Financial Times reported. But behind the lurid headlines and fear of financial panic, something more complicated is happening. These systemically insignificant financial failures are being hyped up by China’s state-controlled media – and then unwittingly amplified by the international press – as part of a campaign of government-sanctioned “Potemkin defaults”.

Insolvent Spanish fishing company Pescanova, which is racing to avoid liquidation, said on Monday it had been granted an extra two weeks by a court to win the support of creditors for its debt restructuring plan, Reuters reported. Lenders have balked at the extent of losses the company, now being managed by the administrator Deloitte, wants them to take. Pescanova, a household name in Spain for its fish fingers, became one of Spain's biggest bankruptcies last year.

China’s banking regulator ordered owners of the nation’s 68 trust companies to be prepared to provide funding or sell their stakes as the risk of defaults rises in the $1.9 trillion industry for high-yield investment. The China Banking Regulatory Commission told trust companies to either restrict their businesses and reduce net assets or have shareholders replenish capital when the firms suffer losses, according to an April 8 notice that was seen by Bloomberg News.