Headlines

Workers at France-Corsica ferry operator SNCM must end their strike and let the troubled company undergo a restructuring to secure its future, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Loss-making SNCM, whose unions have been on strike since June 24, risks bankruptcy and needs to be placed under court protection, Valls told TV station TF1 in an interview. "This situation cannot go on and there needs to be a court-ordered restructuring, because this company is sinking, and in fact the days of strike that accumulate are only putting it more into trouble," Valls said.

The Government needs to overhaul the new insolvency regime and amend the mortgage-to-rent scheme to help resolve the mortgage arrears crisis in Ireland, according to the Oireachtas finance committee, the Irish Times reported. These are two of the main recommendations included in a 36-page report on arrears published by the committee yesterday. On mortgage-to-rent, the committee said: “The scheme...is not fit for purpose.

China should let more ailing firms go bankrupt to help improve economic mechanisms rather than allow them to get government-led bailouts, a deputy central bank governor said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The risk of corporate failures is rising as economic growth slows and the government tries to put a lid on high debt levels in the economy to help ward off financial risks. "In the course of our surveys, we found that many companies are in the zombie state but they have taken up a large amount of credit," Liu Shiyu told a forum in Beijing.

The Vatican bank has blocked the accounts of more than 2,000 clients and ended some 3,000 “customer relationships” as part of a clean-up process that nearly wiped out its profit, its 2013 financial statement showed today, the Irish Times reported. The bank has been hit by years of scandal, including money laundering allegations and is about to be restructured with a new president and a new board. All but about 400 of the 3,000 terminated accounts were “dormant” with small balances and had been inactive for years.

The European Commission is launching an EU-wide interconnection of national insolvency registers by linking up databases from seven Member States: the Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Netherlands, Austria, Romania and Slovenia - with more countries expected to join at a later stage. This first interconnection will serve as a one-stop shop for businesses, creditors and investors looking to invest in Europe.

Proposals to ensure that insolvent businesses continue to receive essential supplies from the IT and utility sectors to aid business recovery were announced in a consultation launched today by Business Minister Jo Swinson, Creditman.co.uk reported. The measures will stop these essential suppliers from seeking an unfair advantage over other creditors by increasing charges or payments of debts as a condition of continuing supply, thus benefiting both consumers and employees.

Holdout investors who rejected Argentina’s debt restructurings in the wake of its $95bn default have said they are prepared to give Buenos Aires extra time to settle, but only if the country negotiates in good faith, the Financial Times reported. Argentine officials met in New York on Monday with a mediator in the dispute. The country needs to reach a rapid deal with holdouts if it is to avoid a second default. Under a US court ruling, Argentina cannot service its restructured bonds unless it also settles with the holdouts in full.

Greece fought off calls to consider a third bailout as European Central Bank President Mario Draghi warned that the pace of economic fixes is slowing, officials said after euro-area finance ministers met yesterday, Bloomberg News reported. Greece has ruled out further aid -- which would come with another raft of conditions -- after its current rescue ends, a Greek official told reporters in Brussels. According to the so-called troika of International Monetary Fund, ECB and euro-area authorities, Greece may need one anyway, an EU official said.

Iceland aims to sell as much as 30 percent of New Landsbanki, one of the banks to emerge from the 2008 financial crisis, to help reduce government debt, Reuters reported. Iceland's three main banks had assets worth around 10 times the value of the economy when they buckled under a weight of debt, sending its currency and economy into a tailspin. New Landsbanki was the only one of the three domestic lenders created out of the financial ruin to be majority-owned by the state.

Dozens of banks are poised to enter the market in the wake of barriers to new entrants being lifted, according to regulators, The Telegraph reported. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) said five times as many businesses are currently applying for banking licences as were granted them last year.