Headlines

Some German insurers may fail in the wake of tough new European capital rules for the industry due to come into force in 2016, Germany's top insurance supervisor said, Reuters reported. "I'm not sure that all insurers will make it," Felix Hufeld, head of insurance at German watchdog Bafin, told a conference at the University of Frankfurt late on Tuesday.

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA is seeking to return to profit after cutting costs and raising capital as part of the bailed-out Italian bank’s restructuring plan, Bloomberg reported. Monte Paschi targets net income of 200 million euros ($272 million) in 2015 and 900 million euros in 2017 after shedding 8,000 staff, selling 3 billion euros of new shares and shrinking its balance sheet by 25 percent, Italy’s third-biggest bank said in a statement yesterday. The lender’s plan, which received European Union approval Nov. 27, will allow it to repay 4.1 billion euros of state aid by 2017.

A road construction company, believed to be controlled by billionaire Vassil Bozhkov, announced it has filed for insolvency, Novinite.com reported. Holding Roads, the leading company in the tie-in, which won the tender for the construction of the longest section in Trakiya highway, linking the city of Yambol and the town of Karnobat, made the statement exactly two years after a spate of reports about its poor financial state flooded local media. The company posted a loss of BGN 6.12 M at the end of September 2011 and said its debts to banks and non-banking financial institutions increase.

OSX Brasil SA, the financially strapped shipbuilder controlled by Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista, posted a third-quarter loss of 1.84 billion reais ($801 million), Reuters reported. The results came in late on Monday, after a Rio de Janeiro court accepted a bankruptcy protection request from OSX, giving it and two of its three nontraded subsidiaries, OSX Construção Naval Ltda and OSX Serviços Operacionais Ltda, 180 days to prepare a restructuring plan. In the third quarter of 2012, OSX earned 6.92 million reais.

Fifty-eight of the 73 stores of insolvent German home improvement retailer Max Bahr are likely to be saved in a deal with supermarket chain Globus, two people familiar with the negotiations said on Tuesday. Max Bahr was due to start clearance sales on Wednesday, like those currently being held at stores of its parent company Praktiker, which has also filed for insolvency. But German group Globus has reached a last-minute agreement with Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns 66 of Max Bahr's stores, and contracts should be signed on Wednesday, one of the sources said.

Pensioners in developed economies are no longer being spared the worst effects of the financial crisis as fiscal austerity programmes aimed at curtailing spending on the elderly start to kick in, the OECD has warned, the Financial Times reported. Spending on pensions, which accounts for nearly a fifth of government outlays on average across the 34-nation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is being limited through a variety of benefit changes including raising state retirement ages and freezing – or even cutting – payouts.

Indebted Finnish miner Talvivaara said on Tuesday its biggest creditor, zinc producer Nyrstar, has withdrawn support for its court application for a corporate restructuring, prompting the court to ask for more information, Reuters reported. Talvivaara, hit by falling nickel prices and chronic production problems, earlier this month halted operations and petitioned the Espoo District Court near Helsinki for a court-supervised reorganisation and warned it might face bankruptcy if the process failed.

U.K. Treasury chief George Osborne on Tuesday gave in to parliamentary demands to enhance the Bank of England's powers to set the amount of capital that banks must hold, but he warned it against using the so-called leverage ratio to impose unnecessary burdens that might restrict economic recovery, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mr.

France‘s second-biggest courier company was placed under receivership Tuesday, four days after it filed for bankruptcy, with the threatened loss of 5,200 jobs, Europe Online magazine reported. The bankruptcy of Mory Ducros is one of the biggest in France since the collapse of Moulinex household appliances maker in 2001. The company was given six months to overcome its difficulties or find a new owner.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said the European Central Bank’s Governing Council should only temporarily be responsible for banking supervision, Bloomberg reported. “The decision-making body responsible for monetary policy should not be in charge of supervising banks as well,” Weidmann said in a speech prepared for delivery today in Cambridge, Massachusetts.