Headlines

Greece’s parliamentary budget office has warned that the country’s taxpayers are exhausted after four straight years of tax increases, reducing the government’s chances of achieving ambitious 2014 fiscal targets agreed with international creditors, the Financial Times reported. The independent budget monitoring office, set up under the terms of Greece’s bailout by the EU and the International Monetary Fund, said in its latest quarterly report that additional tax rises would be unlikely to boost revenues but could result in higher levels of tax evasion and unpaid debts to the state.

Letting nationalised lender Hypo Alpe Adria go bust is not the way to shelter taxpayers from the bank's woes, Finance Minister Michael Spindelegger said on Wednesday, dismissing talk that such a move may still be an option, Reuters reported. He told parliament the best way forward remained the government's plan to get commercial banks to support a "bad bank" that would absorb toxic assets from Hypo, which Austria had to nationalise in 2009.

The ANZ bank has sold about $200 million of debt owed to it by failed Tasmanian timber company Gunns, The West Australian reported. The bank was the lead creditor when Gunns collapsed in 2012. ANZ says it is no longer part of the Gunns banking syndicate and is not involved in providing finance for the proposed Tamar Valley pulp mill. The sale happened in last September before expressions of interest were called for Gunns' assets, including the pulp mill project.

Barely a month after European officials announced the creation of a system for winding down failed banks, it appears the plan could fall victim to a disagreement between member states on the European Council and the European Parliament, the International New York Times reported. Finance and economic officials of the 28 European Union member states agreed in December on a plan to create the “Single Resolution Mechanism” and a fund to help pay the cost of banks that have to be shuttered.

Data from Statistics Finland tell a grim tale of hard times for many Finnish residents in 2013, Yle reported. The numbers show some 3,800 filings for personal debt restructuring, 3,100 bankruptcies, and nearly 600 business restructuring applications – all representing an increase over the previous year. Altogether 15,600 employees were affected by companies going out of business – the highest number in a decade. The same record applied to business restructurings, the numbers show.

Portugal is jostling to be next in line to perform the periphery escape trick, the Financial Times reported. After the country’s 10-year government bond yields fell below 5 per cent for the first time in more than three years last week, Lisbon officials have begun openly to entertain the possibility of emulating Ireland’s “clean exit” from its three-year rescue programme.

Bankrupt oil producer Óleo e Gás Participações SA, controlled by Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista, received court authorization late Monday to use its assets to guarantee a loan critical to keeping the company in operation, Reuters reported. Gilberto Clovis Faria Matos, the judge handling Óleo e Gás' bankruptcy protection filing, ruled that company assets may be used as collateral for up to $200 million of debtor-in-possession, or DIP, financing, according to documents filed with the Rio de Janeiro state court of justice.

AIB has raised with the Government the issue of bank bonuses being reinstated and the cap on pay for executives being lifted, the Irish Times reported. It is understood that the matter was raised with officials at the Department of Finance earlier this month by AIB chairman David Hodgkinson and Jim O’Hara, who chairs the bank’s remuneration committee. The Department of Finance confirmed yesterday that the matter had been discussed but declined to comment further.

Management at Bixi and all their employees received a total of $223,000 in salary bonuses in December, one month before the city-controlled bike-sharing service was forced to file for bankruptcy protection. The company is nearly $50 million in debt, most of which — $38 million — is owed to the City of Montreal, which advanced or guaranteed its loans, The Montreal Gazette reported.

When Michele Alessi saw orders drop at his namesake kitchenware designer he paid his staff to sweep streets and prune trees rather than have them stay home tapping a state-backed layoff fund, Bloomberg News reported. Alessi, 63, whose company makes humorous designer kitchen tools like a Philippe Starck-sketched juicer in the form of a giant spider, takes a dim view of the employer tax-funded layoff program because “it sends the wrong message,” he said in an interview in Milan on Jan. 22.