Headlines

Royal Bank of Scotland PLC was accused on Monday of pushing small businesses into default to boost profits, putting the bank back in the firing line with government officials who only earlier this month decided the partly state-owned bank didn't need to be broken up to help boost Britain's economic recovery, The Wall Street Journal reported. A report by Lawrence Tomlinson, an adviser to Business Secretary Vince Cable, alleges that in some cases, RBS forced business customers to default on loans so that the bank could charge higher fees or seize their properties and sell them. Mr.

A judge in Rio de Janeiro on Monday accepted a bankruptcy-protection request made earlier this month by OSX Brasil SA, the shipbuilder controlled by Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista, giving OSX 180 days to prepare a restructuring plan, Reuters reported. The judge, Gilberto Clovis Farias Matos, said the request by OSX and two of its three non-traded subsidiaries, OSX Construção Naval Ltda and OSX Serviços Operacionais Ltda, met the criteria of Brazil's corporate legislation, according to a statement issued by the press office of the Justice Tribunal of Rio de Janeiro state.

The rising cost of student borrowing meant that households sank further into debt this year for the first time since the financial crisis, a report has found, the London Evening Standard reported. Households' non-mortgage debt grew by 4% in 2013 to £216 billion, marking the first increase for five years and taking the average sum families owe to £8,159, according to PwC's Precious Plastic report. But taking student debt out of the figures wiped £2,259 off the typical amount households owe, bringing the average amount to £5,900 and meaning that underlying consumer debt remained flat.

A borrower has had 70 per cent of a six-figure debt written off as part of the country’s first debt settlement deal under the new personal insolvency regime, TheJournal.ie reported. In what is the first debt settlement arrangement in the country since the new regime came into force earlier this year a deal has been concluded between the debtor and what’s believed to be a number of creditors. It is understood that the debtor, based in the north west of the country, had an unsecured debt for a six figure sum and was unable to meet their obligations.

Norway is moving closer to easing mortgage lending standards as the nation’s deflating property market prompts concern among lawmakers that existing regulations are too tight, Bloomberg reported. Real estate prices, which have doubled over the past decade and touched a record high this year, are now dropping faster than the central bank had predicted. The Conservative-led government, which won power in September, says it’s now looking into raising the amount banks can lend to borrowers to 90 percent of a property’s value, from 85 percent previously, in an effort to support first-time buyers.

Fees paid to lawyers and other professionals working on the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings of Nortel Networks Corp. have passed the $1 billion US mark. That's outraged former Nortel employees who saw their long-term disability benefits cut after the company went under, CBC.ca reported. Ernst & Young, the firm hired by the Ontario Superior Court to be the Canadian Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) monitor is already projecting another $47 million US of professional fees from this past October until February 1, 2014.

Switzerland stepped back from a movement to control corporate pay, overwhelmingly rejecting an initiative that would have restricted executive salaries to 12 times that of the lowest paid employee, The Wall Street Journal reported. Roughly 65% of Swiss voters Sunday opposed the 1:12 Initiative for Fair Pay, according to results from all of the country's 26 cantons reported by Swiss television. Another 34% supported the proposal, which was named for the organizers' belief that no one in a Swiss company should earn more in a month than someone else makes in a year.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Saturday that there were no longer any risks of contagion in the euro zone, and Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras stressed his country did not need a further bailout, Reuters reported. Schaeuble said Greece's achievements in the last 1-1/2 years, which included better-than-expected growth and progress in reducing its deficit, merited respect. He also pointed to the decline in the difference between yields on German and Greek bonds.

BWG, the operator of the Spar and Mace retail brands, yesterday concluded a debt restructuring with a consortium of five lenders that will see an estimated €100 million wiped from the group’s property borrowings, the Irish Times reported. The company, which had debts of about €300 million before the restructuring, has finalised a five-year arrangement with its lenders Bank of Ireland, AIB, Ulster Bank, Bank of Scotland (Ireland) and Blackstone.

German savers angry over low interest rates are complicating the European Central Bank's efforts to keep Europe from sliding into a downward spiral of falling prices and economic stagnation, The Wall Street Journal reported. But the uproar in Europe's biggest economy over the ECB's latest interest-rate cut earlier this month to a record-low 0.25% is unlikely to stop the ECB from pursuing radical measures if needed to avoid a decade of economic malaise. For while Germany still matters greatly, it has lost its perceived veto at the ECB on major decisions.