Headlines

China pledged Friday to create a unified pension system to boost consumption and encourage labor mobility, a step toward empowering its vast rural poor, The Wall Street Journal reported. China's State Council, or cabinet, said it planned to create a unified pension system for residents in both rural and urban areas. Funding would come from contributions from individuals, the central government, local governments and social institutions, the State Council said on the central government's website.

Greece has met the conditions demanded of it by its international creditors and should get its promised bailout funds, central bank Governor George Provopoulos said Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a speech at a London think-tank, Mr. Provopoulos said that his country had posted a primary budget surplus in 2013, a key condition for aid loans from the euro zone and International Monetary Fund under the agreement struck in November 2012.

Siac’s future remains undecided after three creditors claiming they are owed a total of more than €30 million yesterday challenged a proposed rescue plan for the construction group in the High Court, the Irish Times reported. Investors, including owners the Feighery family, director Finn Lyden, French group Colas and private backer Ducales, are willing to put €10.5 million into the troubled group under the terms of a rescue plan proposed by High Court-appointed examiner Michael McAteer of Grant Thornton.

A disorderly insolvency of nationalised Austrian lender Hypo Alpe Adria could cost nearly 25 billion euros ($34 billion), the central bank has warned the government, a newspaper reported on Thursday. Der Standard reported that a letter sent in November by the central bank and a special Hypo task force said letting Hypo go bust may quickly cost the public sector and subordinated creditors of Hypo up to 16 billion euros.

Commerzbank has sold some of its property loans in Spain, as it continues to rid itself of the assets held in its so-called “bad bank”, the Financial Times reported. The German lender said it had sold non-performing loans worth €710m from its Spanish commercial property portfolio to undisclosed “international investors”. The sale follows reports in recent days that Commerzbank is in talks with private equity companies Apollo and Cerberus to offload its entire Spanish property portfolio, which is now worth a little more than €4bn, according to one person familiar with the situation.

Spanish gaming group Codere failed to reach an agreement with bondholders over a major debt restructuring on Thursday, increasing pressure on the company as it battles to avoid insolvency, Reuters reported. The bingo hall and casino owner is struggling to keep up with debt payments because of higher tax bills and other costs and is one of many Spanish companies grappling with high debt levels even as the country emerges from recession.

The first protective certificate in a High Court personal insolvency case was issued yesterday for a woman with debts of about €2.5 million, which she cannot repay, the Irish Times reported. Although such certificates protecting a debtor from bankruptcy proceedings have already been issued at Circuit Court level, the case was the first of its kind to be dealt with in the High Court. Ms Justice Marie Baker said she was satisfied to issue the certificate, having considered the application from the new Insolvency Service of Ireland.

Heenan Blaikie, a Canadian law firm well known for its labor and employment practice, said late on Wednesday its partners had voted to dissolve the firm in the face of financial pressures, making it the largest failure of a law firm in Canadian history, Reuters reported on a Canadian Lawyer story. The Montreal-based firm, which traces its roots back to the 1970s, said the move to wind down operations came after an in-depth analysis of its restructuring options in the current legal market.

Barclays will begin to hand out bonuses on Friday to its 140,000 staff around the world from a bonus pool expected to be bigger than last year's, The Guardian reported. In a move that could inflame relationships with shareholders after the bank's £5.8bn cash call last year, the bank is thought to be planning to hand out larger bonuses to some employees than a year ago to prevent top staff quitting for higher-paying rivals. This time a year ago the bank handed out a total of almost £2.2bn in bonuses – £1.8bn for the 2012 financial year and another £300m in deferred payments.

Hopes that Punch Taverns might finally be able to put its debt woes behind it appeared to be dashed on Wednesday as lenders to the pubs group dismissed a financial restructuring plan as “unsignable” and “flawed”. Bondholders reacted angrily to a last minute plea by Stephen Billingham, the executive chairman of Punch Taverns, to back a deal to restructure the group’s £2.3bn debt pile, which will be put to the vote next Friday. Punch, which is the second biggest pub landlord in the UK with some 4,000 properties, last month published a final proposal to solve the group’s complex debt problems.