Headlines

The Government expects Ireland’s borrowing requirement in the years to 2020 to be “significantly” reduced as a result of a new deal with the euro zone powers to postpone bailout loan repayments by an average of seven years, the Irish Times reported. Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said the arrangement should further reduce the interest the State pays to issue new debt to private investors as the Government plots its exit from the bailout at the end of this year. The deal was signed off yesterday in Dublin Castle at a meeting of EU ministers, which continues today.

Corp. Geo SAB, Mexico’s second- largest publicly traded homebuilder, said it will seek to restructure debt after bleeding cash for a third straight year, sparking a selloff that sent its bonds to record lows, Bloomberg reported. Geo hired Fians Capital to provide advice with the “principal objective of generating efficiencies and reviewing alternatives for restructuring its debt,” according to a filing to the Mexican stock exchange.

Portugal could struggle to avoid a second international rescue even if it, alongside Ireland, is granted more time to repay its existing bailout loans by eurozone finance ministers meeting in Dublin on Friday, the Financial Times reported. Portugal, which is tussling to meet its deficit reduction targets during a deep recession, would have to raise a lot more in the two years after its planned exit from the bailout programme in 2014 than it did in pre-crisis times, according to a document seen by the Financial Times.

Belgium-based Alfacam , the provider of Europe's largest fleet of outside broadcast vans, said it may have to file for bankruptcy if a final bid for protection under Belgian law fails, Reuters reported. The company, which also provides broadcast services and TV studios, was granted creditor protection in October and has been seeking investors since then. It released the statement after talks with creditors and investors failed. "No agreement has been found about a solution between all the parties involved in this negotiation," it said.

The cost of bailing out Cyprus has swollen to euro 23 billion ($30 billion), with the crisis-hit country having to take on the lion's share of the measures needed to avoid bankruptcy, according to a draft document by the country's international creditors. The draft document, obtained by The Associated Press Thursday, says the country will have to find 13 billion euros ($17 billion) - an increase on the 7 billion euro contribution agreed during the country's chaotic bailout talks last month.

Half of all lending to small and medium business is in arrears, according to the Central Bank. Fiona Muldoon, the director of credit institution supervision at the bank told a conference in Tralee yesterday that of the €50 billion lent to the sector by the domestic banks, some €25 billion was impaired and that the rate at which banks are facing up to the problem is unacceptable five years into the banking crisis, the Irish Times reported.

House prices in large parts of the euro zone fell in the fourth quarter of 2012 adding to the euro zone's economic woes, by both reducing household wealth and future consumption, particularly in austerity-ravaged economies, The Wall Street Journal reported. The decline in prices can also lead to problems for the bloc's banks if the value of homes falls below the value of mortgage loans they are secured against.

Under fire for its banking secrecy, Austria hit back at Britain and the United States on Thursday, urging them to crack down on money laundering and tax havens in their own backyards, as EU ministers prepared to debate the issue in Dublin, Reuters reported. Friction emerged before the Dublin meeting as France's budget minister warned Austria it could be blacklisted if it refused to share information on EU citizens' bank accounts, a threat Vienna dismissed as an "improper diversionary tactic".

Buffeted by a political scandal, a stagnant economy and angry public reaction to a report about secret offshore bank accounts, President François Hollande of France announced the creation of a special prosecutor Wednesday to pursue cases of corruption and tax fraud and vowed to eradicate tax havens “in Europe and the world,” the International Herald Tribune reported. As he spoke, one of those tax havens, Luxembourg, said it would bow to pressure from its European allies and begin forwarding the details of its foreign clients to their home governments.

Cyprus has agreed to sell gold worth €400m from its reserves as a contribution to an international bailout, roiling the precious metal markets as investors feared it could set a precedent for other troubled eurozone countries. Nicosia’s plan to dispose of most of its gold holdings would be the first such sale by a country seeking international assistance since the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98, when South Korea asked the public to donate jewellery to the central bank for the good of the nation.