Headlines

Argentina has greeted an order from a US appeals court for more information on its offer to holdout creditors as a glimmer of hope in its fight not to pay “vulture funds” without a steep writedown on their debt, the Financial Times reported. “We are not trying to convince the vultures to participate, we are trying to convince the judges, and that’s why it’s a good sign that the court has asked Argentina what the 2010 offer means,” Hernán Lorenzino, the economy minister, told the newspaper Página 12.

PT Berlian Laju Tanker Tbk, the Indonesian operator of 72 tankers, won't be permitted to proceed in U.S. bankruptcies while keeping all papers sealed and withheld from the public, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein ruled at a hearing, StamfordAdvocate.com reported on a Bloomberg story. Gramercy Distressed Opportunity Fund II along with two sister funds filed an involuntary Chapter 11 petition against the PT Berlian parent in December. The company responded by asking Bernstein to dismiss the involuntary case.

The economic crises in the United States and Europe wiped out decades of progress in expanding the world financial system, depressing the flow of investments and loans across borders and potentially setting the stage for an epoch of entrenched low growth, according to a new study on global finance patterns, The Washington Post reported. The McKinsey Global Institute report combines databases from the International Monetary Fund, global central banks and other sources to try to sum up what has been lost in the aftermath of the 2008 Lehman Bros.

Memory chipmaker Micron said the Tokyo district court issued an order approving its acquisition of Japanese memory chipmaker Elpida after creditors agreed to the plan, Reuters reported. Boise, Idaho-based Micron, which is losing money due to a crumbling PC industry, wants to create larger economies of scale and offered in July to buy Elpida for about $750 million in cash and to pay creditors a total of $1.75 billion in annual installments through 2019. Elpida's creditors voted to approve the deal on Tuesday, Micron said.

For years, Slovenia was on the fast track. It was the first former socialist country to adopt the euro. Construction boomed. The economy grew an average of 4.4% annually from 1997 to 2008. These days, however, the euro crisis has shattered Slovenia's highflying dreams. After three years of recession, frustration is mounting among a populace angry at lost opportunities, cuts to once-generous state benefits and government corruption scandals, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Greece missed key revenue targets by a wide margin last year, triggering concern over whether the government is fully committed to cracking down on tax evasion and graft, according to a confidential report by EU and International Monetary Fund experts leaked to Athens media. A drive to boost collection of overdue tax raised only €1.1bn in 2012, compared with a target of €2bn, according to the report. At the same time Greece’s mountain of unpaid tax increased by 10 per cent to €55bn, equivalent to almost 30 per cent of national output.

Worries that Argentina is inching closer to default sent the cost of insuring the country's government bonds to their highest level since November and pushed shares in its benchmark index lower, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move followed remarks made by Argentina's lawyer in a U.S. appeals court hearing in New York on Wednesday, suggesting the government would choose to default if ordered to pay creditors who hadn't agreed to new terms for their debt resulting from the country's 2001 default.

Shareholders of debt-laden French spirits group Belvedere approved the company's debt-restructuring plan after an unruly meeting lasting more than five hours on Thursday, giving it a chance to avoid an otherwise likely liquidation, Reuters reported. The plan, which must still be approved by a court at a hearing on March 11, was supported by more than 70 percent of shareholders, while investors rejected resolutions to dismiss the company's board added to the agenda at the last minute.

Bankers’ bonuses are to be capped at two times bankers’ salaries and banks will be subject to a strict transparency regime, under a provisional EU deal that includes minimal concessions to cushion the most severe pay crackdown since the 2008 financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. In a serious setback for UK’s fight to head-off some of the remuneration curbs, the European parliament late on Wednesday night secured agreement on a mandatory 1:1 ratio on salary relative to variable pay, which can rise to 2:1 with explicit shareholder approval.

For new South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who in her inauguration speech promised a fairer society, one of the biggest challenges will be to tackle a growing income gap that has seen almost one in two elderly South Koreans slip back into poverty, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ms. Park in her speech on Monday alluded to tougher economic times ahead, talking about a new chapter in the economic miracle that lifted many South Koreans out of poverty in the decades of breakneck growth after the Korean War—but deepened inequalities.