Headlines

Argentina may learn at any time whether a U.S. appeals court will rule that it must pay $1.4 billion to holders of its defaulted debt, something the South American country has resisted for more than a decade, Bloomberg reported. The court in New York is set to rule after Argentina submitted a payment proposal last week that would force holders of defaulted bonds to take a steep discount on debt the nation repudiated in its record 2001 default on $95 billion. With further appeals unlikely to succeed, the ruling may be the last word on the matter.

Italian real estate management company Prelios said on Wednesday it approved a 561 million euro ($717 million) debt restructuring plan, as well as a 185 million euros capital increase, Reuters reported. The heavily indebted company manages properties in Italy and Germany and has been hit hard by writedowns on real estate investments in its recession-hit home market. Prelios said its net loss for 2012 was 241.7 million euros, compared to a loss of 289.6 million euros in 2011, as a result of real estate writedowns and restructuring costs.

Cyprus’s banks reopened from a nearly two-week hiatus on Thursday with no sign of disorder among depositors, while the country’s politicians pointed fingers over who was to blame for the financial sector’s meltdown, The Wall Street Journal reported. Small groups of account-holders—typically numbering two dozen or less, and mostly retirees—pressed to enter the banks as they formally reopened at noon local time.

Russia's largest banks said Thursday their clients' exposure to losses in Cyprus so far appears modest, while there were few other signs of immediate fallout for Russian business, executives and analysts said, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Kremlin's angry public attacks last week on a planned tax on bank deposits in a tax haven long favored by Russians led many observers to suspect Russians' exposure to Cyprus's troubled banks was substantial. Estimates ran as high as €20 billion ($26 billion) in Russian money said to be at risk.

Japan’s central bank governor has told parliament that the government’s vast and growing debt is “not sustainable,” and that a loss of confidence in state finances could “have a very negative impact” on the entire economy, the Financial Times reported. The warning comes as Shinzo Abe’s administration attempts to drag Japan out of more than a decade of deflation with aggressive monetary and fiscal stimulus.

Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar has said he is sorry for any "contradictory" remarks which may have given the impression that he and Taoiseach Enda Kenny were at odds on proposed insolvency rules relating to working mothers, the Irish Times reported. On Tuesday Mr Varadkar said women in families with excessive debt had a "legitimate" expectation of retaining their careers. But he added that should childcare bills be so excessive they were deemed to have prevented mortgage repayments being made, "well then that's something that needs to be taken into account".

A group of shareholders in Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has launched a multi-million pound lawsuit against the state-owned bank for misleading investors at the height of the credit crisis in 2008, Reuters reported. In the first court document filed in the UK over the bank's record 12 billion pound cash call in April 2008, a group of 21 claimants - including international investors and pension funds - allege the bank published a defective prospectus littered with misstatements and omissions.

A unit of Russia's Alfa Group said on Thursday it had withdrawn its proposal to acquire Central European Distribution Corp, one of the world's largest vodka producers, through a restructuring of CEDC's finances. Alfa Group unit A1 said in a two-sentence statement to Reuters that it had officially withdrawn its non-binding offer to restructure CEDC. It also said the two other members of its consortium, CEDC investor Mark Kaufman and SPI Group, which owns Stolichnaya Vodka, had been informed of its decision.

Cyprus's plan to impose capital controls threatens to test the ties that bind Europe's monetary union and could see euros on the Mediterranean island valued differently to those in the rest of the bloc, Reuters reported in an insight. The capital controls, being imposed to avert a run on banks after an EU bailout, will limit foreign transactions and capital outflows but not movements of money within the country itself, the head of the Cyprus chamber of commerce said on Wednesday after meeting government officials.

The risks posed by hosting a large financial industry became a flash point on Wednesday as the Cyprus bailout trained the spotlight on other small euro nations that depend on the sector for jobs and economic growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. The issue has become a sore spot mainly for Luxembourg and Malta after the debate over Cyprus prompted European ministers and politicians to question the viability of housing a large financial center in a small country.