Headlines

Britain's plan to safeguard retail banking is a far better idea than the U.S. approach of forcing banks to hive off speculative trading, the Bank of England's next governor told MPs, Reuters reported. Mark Carney is to take up the reins in July, three months after the central bank becomes Britain's main regulator for lenders. In the wake of the financial crisis, regulators are introducing measures to shield the deposit-taking business of big banks from high-risk practices, reducing the prospect of a big failure that could destabilise markets and force a government bailout.

A complex restructuring plan for Punch Taverns, the debt-laden landlord group that owns almost one in 10 British pubs, is likely to face criticism from senior bond holders who doubt the company's claims that it will create a "sustainable capital structure", The Guardian reported.

An attempt by Ireland to ease its debt burden was thrown into disarray early on Thursday as the government scrambled to introduce emergency legislation to liquidate Anglo Irish Bank, the failed lender, without having secured a key debt swap deal with the European Central Bank, the Financial Times reported. The government had intended to announce the liquidation of the bank alongside a deal with the ECB on replacing €28bn in costly promissory notes, used to bail out Anglo Irish in 2009.

The breadth of a plan to narrow the gap between rich and poor, and the fact that it came out at all, heightened the sentiment that China's leaders may be ready to take on powerful interests quickly rather than laboriously trying to reach a broad consensus first, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Monte dei Paschi di Siena, an ancient Tuscan bank whose troubles have shaken Italian politics and caused jitters around the euro zone, on Wednesday confirmed earlier estimates of losses from a series of secret transactions that were used to conceal the scope of the bank’s problems, the International Herald Tribune reported. The bank said its losses from three questionable transactions were 730 million euros (about $985 million), only slightly higher than an estimate in October of a loss of 720 million euros.

Debt-laden Italian yellow pages publisher Seat Pagine Gialle has filed a request in court to be admitted to a procedure aimed at seeking a debt restructuring deal with its creditors, the company said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. "The first step to stabilise the company financially over the long term and guarantee it can continue to operate has been made," Seat PG said in a statement. The application for the so-called "concordato preventivo" - a process similar to Chapter 11 proceedings in the United States - was made with a court in Turin, where Seat is based since its foundation in 1925.

A group representing contractors predicts some businesses will not survive Mainzeal Construction going into receivership, Radio New Zealand reported. The future of Mainzeal is unclear after the company was put in receivership on Wednesday, jeopardising the jobs of hundreds of employers as well as sub-contractors. Mainzeal is New Zealand's third largest construction firm, behind Fletcher Construction and Hawking, and has been involved in projects worth $7.5 billion throughout New Zealand since being founded in the late 1960s.

Euro zone finance ministers will discuss on Monday a Cypriot proposal to order an independent report on whether the country is fully complying with laws against money laundering, a senior EU official said, Reuters reported. The report would be a response to German and others' concerns that Cyprus, which asked the euro zone for financial help last June, has been a tax haven for rich Russians.

China has pledged to increase minimum wages and force state-owned companies to hand over more of their revenues to the public as part of a push to tackle growing inequality, the Financial Times reported. The chasm between China’s rich and poor is seen by analysts as a significant threat to political stability, with discontent over inequality spilling over into angry online comment and, on occasion, street protests. Unveiling a 35-point plan on Tuesday, the State Council, or cabinet, said it wanted to lift as many as 80m people from poverty by 2015.

Poland’s government drew a line in the sand ahead of the upcoming European Union’s summit, saying proposed 30 billion euros ($39.9 billion) of additional budget cuts were “inconceivable,” The Wall Street Journal Emerging Europe blog reported. EU leaders will Feb. 7-8 meet to try to agree on the size and structure of the bloc’s budget for 2014-2020 after the failure of their previous attempt in November over the €30 billion of more cuts proposed by Germany.