Headlines

Allied Irish Banks (AIB) has obtained €9.3 million judgment orders on consent at the Commercial Court against Galway businessmen Tom and John Nestor. The bank also secured orders allowing it to enforce the judgment across the EU, the Irish Times reported. The orders, granted to the bank’s counsel Kelly Smith by Mr Justice Brian Cregan, arises from various facilities advanced by the bank in 2012. Judgment was granted jointly and severally against Tom Nestor, Averard East, Taylor’s Hill, Galway and John Nestor, Gleann na Trá, Sandy Road, Galway.

Greece’s prime minister and fellow eurozone leaders emerged from a meeting early on Friday morning touting a breakthrough agreement to unlock much-needed bailout funds for Athens — only to fall into disagreement hours later about what it all meant, the Financial Times reported. Two days of intensive and occasionally heated negotiations at an EU summit in Brussels amounted to little more than a repeat of talks a month ago between eurozone finance ministers that officials then also hailed as the definitive agreement to get the final bailout review under way.

Market opinion is divided over the importance of proposed German legislation that would effectively force senior bondholders down the credit capital structure when a failing bank is resolved, Reuters reported. "What the lawmakers have done is effectively put in a clause that clarifies the creditor hierarchy for senior debt and sets out clearly that senior debt is below derivatives and structured notes when it comes to resolution," said one debt banker. "It gives a very practical bail-in hierarchy," the banker said.

A Brazilian judge has accepted charges filed by state prosecutors against 11 companies accused of forming a cartel to raise prices on the construction and upkeep of subway and train systems in the state of Sao Paulo, The Wall Street Journal reported. A press officer of the prosecutor’s office said Saturday that Judge Marcos Pimentel Tamassia accepted the charges that involve contracts signed between 2000 and 2007. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to comment the case.

Zimbabwe’s beleaguered mobile network operator Telecel Zimbabwe’s finances are in a sorry state amid indications the company is bankrupt. The company reportedly has management inefficiencies, high director fees and is riddled with hefty management fees paid out to its foreign shareholders. Since its inception in 1998, Telecel has gone through major changes in shareholding at an international level.

The U.S. and Europe are to blame for China’s formation of its own development bank after the Asian power was neglected in the structures of existing international banks, a top European Union official said Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported. “China is aggressively stepping into an area where if we paid more attention, we would have had more normal relationships,” Kristalina Georgieva, vice president of the European Commission, said at the Brussels Forum, a foreign-policy conference.

Small firms in Scotland are at risk of collapse because public bodies are withholding £120 million of debts owed to private construction companies, The National reported. According to research carried out by industry body the Specialist Engineering Contractors (SEC) Group Scotland, “little effort” is being made to ensure secondary or sub-contractors get the same treatment as primary contractors who are paid within 30 days. The primary reason for withholding the cash is to improve the public bodies’ working capital.

The country’s savings rate, long one of the highest in the world, is now below zero. In short, Japan’s citizens are spending more than they earn, the International New York Times reported. By comparison, the rate in the United States, where consumers have a reputation for living beyond their means, is on the rise, hitting 5.5 percent in January. The reversal is stark. For decades, many Japanese hoarded cash, a habit that took hold in the years after World War II, when government protections like unemployment insurance and public pensions were scarce. Today, Japan is in a bind.

Spain's bank restructuring fund (FROB) said late on Wednesday it would not bail out the Spanish affiliate of Andorra's Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) Banco Madrid, clearing the way for insolvency proceedings at the lender, Reuters reported. FROB, the state-funded vehicle which bailed out several Spanish banks during the height of the financial crisis in 2012, said the lender's problems did not pose a systemic risk which warranted the use of public funds. Banco Madrid began bankruptcy proceedings on Monday after customers rushed to empty accounts in the wake of U.S.

Beginning next October, corporate reorganization professionals in Britain are going to have do something quite amazing: At the start of a case, they are going to have to estimate what their total fees will be. And if they exceed that amount, they will have to go back to the creditors and obtain further approval, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Various proposals have been floated to help rein in costs, like greater judicial oversight and fixed fees, but the British proposal may have hit on an intriguing idea.