Headlines

The Irish Mortgage Holders’ Organisation wants the Government to introduce a State-sponsored split mortgage that would allow local authorities to supplement the payments made by home owners in loan arrears and in danger of having their properties repossessed. It also wants a mortgage-to-lease scheme to replace the mortgage-to-rent one that has failed to gain traction and it has proposed changes to the insolvency regime.

The EU is collecting evidence to determine if Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy should face an investigation into whether they are illegally underwriting banks that have bolstered their capital with assets considered low-grade in the rest of the eurozone, the Financial Times reported. At issue are so-called deferred tax assets, which are accepted as core capital in the four southern European countries, but which are not regarded by the European Central Bank as “high quality”.

Schahin Petroleo & Gas SA, a rig and platform supplier to Brazil’s state-run producer, is seeking a credit line to avoid filing for bankruptcy protection, said two people familiar with the matter. Bonds tumbled, Bloomberg News reported. Schahin, which supplies Petroleo Brasileiro SA with offshore drilling rigs and production platforms, is temporarily halting operations at five of the units it has leased to Petrobras, it said in an e-mailed statement.

Cyprus freed capital flows on Monday, ending two years of controls that set an unwanted precedent for the euro zone at the height of the bloc's debt crisis, Reuters reported. The Mediterranean nation became the first and, to date, the only euro zone member to impose controls, acting to stem a flight of capital from its banks in March 2013. But with an incremental relaxation over the past 18 months, banks reported no unusual activity on Monday.

Greece has two weeks to produce some red meat, the International New York Times reported in commentary. The prospect of a default is off the table for the time being after Yanis Varoufakis, the country’s finance minister, confirmed that Greece would meet a payment to the International Monetary Fund on Thursday. But, with more payments looming, the fear of bankruptcy will be back by the end of April if Greece doesn’t come up with some serious overhauls by then.

Russia's VTB bank and Gazprombank are holding talks on the restructuring of mining giant Mechel's debt, along with other Russian banks, VTB head Andrei Kostin announced on Monday, Sputnik News reported. "We are working with Mechel, discussions continue, we are also holding talks with other banks, including Gazprombank, trying to find some kind of a solution, but so far I cannot say that we have a deal," Kostin said. According to the VTB head, Mechel's readiness to pay off its overdue debt is a positive development.

their controversial veto – granted to them when a new insolvency service was set up two years ago – severely weakened before the summer, the Irish Times reported. The Government’s Economic Management Council (EMC), made up of Enda Kenny, Joan Burton, Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin, met last week. It is understood to be pushing the Department of Justice hard for a radical overhaul of insolvency rules as the mortgage arrears crisis continues to be a political problem.

After more than six long and lonely years, Iceland is hoping its financial isolation will soon be over. The North Atlantic nation, whose spectacular 2008 meltdown came to symbolise the greed and mismanagement of the global financial system, is expected to begin unwinding the bankruptcies of its three main banks and lifting controls on the movement of capital in and out of the island within months.

A Brazilian state court accepted a bankruptcy protection request filed by engineering conglomerate Grupo OAS for nine of its units, in the largest corporate failure yet related to the snowballing Petróleo Brasileiro SA corruption scandal. The decision on Thursday by Judge Daniel Carnio Costa at São Paulo State's 1st District of Judicial Recoveries allows Grupo OAS to begin steps to renegotiate about 8 billion reais ($2.5 billion) in debt, according to a statement. OAS has 60 days to present a debt restructuring proposal to all creditors.

Hungary has room to cut its interest rates even more from 1.95%, the lowest on record, because of falling consumer prices and a recent conversion of foreign-currency loans into forints, which has reduced the vulnerability of households, a central banker said. With consumer prices falling on an annual basis for sixth months in a row and posting an annual decline of 1% in February, the central bank last week cut its main interest rate by 0.15 percentage point to 1.95%, The Wall Street Journal reported.