Headlines

Six years after the start of an economic crisis that left Spain on the verge of collapse, the country has finally seen bankers sentenced for financial abuses, the Irish Times reported. On Thursday Ricard Pagès, a former managing director of Catalan savings bank Caixa Penedès, was handed a two-year jail sentence for embezzling funds from the lender, while three of his former colleagues were given one-year sentences. The defendants’ jail terms were cut after they admitted their guilt and agreed to give back €28.6 million which they had ploughed into their pension funds.

A dangerous precedent could be set by Austria if its government goes ahead with a potential bail-in of Hypo Alpe-Adria's guaranteed subordinated debt, market participants said last week, Reuters reported. This small Austrian lender could be another test case for European authorities. Bail-in of bank subordinated debt has become commonplace over the last two years, but no country has retroactively removed a guarantee before. "The cost benefit of going down that route would be poor," said one analyst.

Argentina has reached a landmark deal with the Paris Club of creditor nations to pay a longstanding $9.7bn debt in its latest move to win back confidence from international capital markets, the Financial Times reported. After marathon negotiations in Paris, ending after midnight on Wednesday, Argentina agreed to pay the debt that remained from its 2001 default over five to seven years. The government will pay $650m in July, and a further $500m by May 2015. The deal marks an important step in Argentina’s efforts to attract foreign investment.

The chief executive of Brazil's Oleo e Gas Participacoes said Thursday he is confident the oil and gas company will manage to exit bankruptcy protection despite efforts by some of its creditors to derail the company's restructuring plan, The Wall Street Journal reported. Bondholders will gather in Rio de Janeiro to vote Tuesday on a restructuring plan for the company, formerly known as OGX. Earlier this week, one of the company's creditors was able to get an injunction from a judge in Rio aimed at stopping that vote.

Talks with creditors of Kazakhstan's wealth fund-controlled Alliance Bank have broken down without agreement, the bank's chief executive said on Thursday. "Negotiations have broken down, no agreement was reached," Timur Isatayev told Reuters by telephone. The bank met a creditor committee over the past two days and offered improved terms compared with an initial debt restructuring offer made in January, Isatayev said. Alliance is 51 percent owned by local sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna, which has reduced its stake in recent weeks.

Lending to UK businesses fell sharply in the first quarter of the year, according to Bank of England figures that raise questions about the effectiveness of the UK’s Funding for Lending Scheme to encourage bank loans, the Financial Times reported. The UK central bank said yesterday that lending under the scheme dropped by £2.7bn in the three months to April. The fall was driven by a sharp decrease in lending to the commercial real estate sector.

Almost a quarter of employers running final salary pension schemes face a substantial increase in the annual levy they pay into the pensions lifeboat fund under proposals announced on Thursday. In a consultation document, the Pensions Protection Fund, which continues to pay benefits to scheme members if their employer goes bust, unveiled plans for a radical overhaul of the way it assesses the insolvency risk of schemes paying the levy.

Amado Yáñez Osuna, who headed Oceanografía, the oil services company at the center of a $400 million fraud involving Citigroup’s Mexico subsidiary, has been arrested, according to Mexico’s attorney general’s office, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. The announcement, made late Wednesday, suggests that prosecutors are close to building a case against Mr. Yáñez in the scheme, which forced Citi to reduce its 2013 earnings by $235 million. The arrest warrant was issued against Mr.

The liquidator of Pierse Contracting, once Ireland’s second-biggest construction company, began a High Court action seeking restriction orders against nine of its former directors under section 150 of the Companies Act, 1990, yesterday, the Irish Times reported. Pierse went bust in 2010 leaving a deficit of €212 million, making it one of the biggest collapses of the bust. About €50 million was owed by Pierse to unsecured creditors, including subcontractors.

Debt-laden British pub company Punch Taverns Plc said on Tuesday that certain stakeholders had proposed a restructuring of its securitisations that would likely reduce the company's debt by about 26 percent. Shares in the company, which has about 4,300 pubs, sank more than 20 percent to 11.50 pence in morning trade on the London Stock Exchange. Punch's debt structure is complex and split into two securitised vehicles. Punch A holds 1.45 billion pounds of gross debt, while Punch B holds 884 million pounds, according to the company's 2013 annual report.