Headlines

The Spanish government is hoping to put the country’s creaking pension system back on sounder financial footing this week, with the launch of a pension reform that places tight curbs on how far payments to Spain’s 9m elderly people can rise in the coming years and decades, the Financial Times reported. The reform, due to enter into force on January 1, forms a key plank in the broader structural reform programme that has dominated Mariano Rajoy’s first two years as prime minister.

Brian Harvey, founder of business support firm Siteserv, will become chairman of Siac, the distressed construction company, once a rescue deal is agreed with its banks, the Irish Times reported. Mr Harvey has to secure a deal by January 30th, the date Siac’s court-ordered bankruptcy protection expires. Siac chief executive Martin Maher will remain in situ following agreement being reached with Siac’s three banks – Bank of Ireland, Bank of Scotland Ireland and KBC.

The family of former billionaire Seán Quinn are preparing to challenge the constitutionality of the IBRC Act to prevent the sale of their assets to a third party or the transfer of their loans into the National Asset Management Agency. The Quinn family and their legal advisers are, according to an informed source, focusing their attention on section 12 of the IBRC Act, which relates to “the sale or transfer of any asset or liability by IBRC”.

China’s financial system is in danger of becoming too big to bail out, The International New York Times reported. Official bank lending has more than doubled since the global financial crisis, growing nearly twice as fast as the overall economy.

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, the bailed-out Italian bank, will delay a 3 billion-euro ($4.1 billion) stock sale until at least May from the first quarter after its biggest shareholder demanded a postponement, Bloomberg News reported. The bank’s investors backed the delayed rights offer at an extraordinary shareholder meeting in Siena on Dec. 28, according to Monte Paschi Chairman Alessandro Profumo. The vote ends a clash between the lender and its main shareholder over the timing of the offering.

French President Francois Hollande received approval from the country’s constitutional court to proceed with his plan to tax salaries above 1 million euros at 75 percent for this year and next, Bloomberg News reported. Under Hollande’s proposal, companies will have to pay a 50 percent duty on wages above 1 million euros ($1.4 million). In combination with other taxes and social charges, the rate will amount to 75 percent of salaries above the threshold, the court wrote in a decision published today.

India's Lanco Infratech Ltd. is reportedly in the process of signing one of the country's largest corporate debt restructuring deals. The said deal will allow the debt-stricken infrastructure developer to reschedule repayment of as much as INR7,500 crore and give it access to new credit of INR3,500 crore. Economic Times, quoting Lanco Infratech's Amardeep Jaiswal, said the company and a consortium of over 25 lenders led by Mumbai-based IDBI Bank Ltd. on Friday met in Gurgaon to work out the details of the deal. Jaiswal is Lanco Infratech's legal affairs head.

Hundreds of people with debts of less than €20,000 faced delays in securing insolvency arrangements after legislation to assist them was found to be unworkable, the Irish Times reported. The Personal Insolvency Act 2012 contained flaws that made it almost impossible for the Money Advice and Budgeting Service (Mabs) to progress debt relief notices, designed to help people with small unsecured debts such as personal and credit card loans. New legislation, the Companies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2013, was signed into law by President Michael D Higgins on Christmas Eve.

Lone Pine Resources Inc. is requesting U.S. Bankruptcy Court approval of its reorganization plan, contingent with its also receiving the Canadian bankruptcy court's blessing early next year, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company is scheduled to ask the Canadian court to approve its plan during a sanction hearing on Jan. 9. That approval will implement the plan in Canada, but it still would require U.S. court confirmation. Lone Pine is requesting that on Jan. 14, the U.S.

Japan's financial regulator came down on Mizuho Bank harder than expected yesterday for not addressing loans to members of alleged criminal groups, and for the way it handled disclosures about the problem, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Financial Services Agency ordered Mizuho Bank to suspend for a month its loan transactions with consumer-credit affiliates, which handled the questionable loans. It also ordered Mizuho Bank and its parent, Mizuho Financial Group Inc., to submit a business-improvement plan by Jan. 17.