Headlines

Argentina has added more than 100 consumer products to a controversial price control program as the government grapples with one of the highest rates of inflation in the world, The Wall Street Journal reported. Inflation is widely thought to be more than 30% following the devaluation of the Argentine peso in January and the government's habit of financing deficits through money printing. Instead of making unpopular spending cuts to tame inflation, President Cristina Kirchner has capped prices on almost 200 basic consumer goods and almost doubled benchmark interest rates.

An Ontario judge has awarded $85-million in damages to the creditors of long-defunct theatre company Livent Inc., ruling the firm’s auditors at Deloitte & Touche were negligent in their reviews of the company’s 1997 financial statements, The Globe and Mail reported. The critical ruling, released late Friday, marks a rare victory for creditors in a lawsuit against its auditors.

The rate of jobs growth in Ireland’s post-crash economy is confounding economists, not least because it is coinciding with a contraction in economic growth, the Irish Times reported. In the aftermath of recession, employment can typically lag a recovery in demand as firms expand operations but remain cautious about hiring new staff. This can produce a period of jobless growth - a phenomenon which plagued the Irish economy in the early 1990s when multinationals increased output but unemployment remained stubbornly high.

Mexicana airlines, which suspended flights four years ago due to its heavy debt load, was declared bankrupt on Friday, paving the way to dismantle the iconic company, once one of Mexico's top two carriers, Reuters reported. About 30 investors sought for more than three years to rescue the airline, which has an estimated debt of $1 billion, but none proved to have the necessary funds.

Chinese banks are stuck in a lose-lose legal battle between domestic shipyards and foreign buyers over billions of dollars in refund guarantees that are supposed to be paid out if shipbuilders fail to deliver on time, Reuters reported in an insight. One in three ships ordered from Chinese builders was behind schedule in 2013, according to data from Clarksons Research, a UK-based shipping intelligence firm. Although that was an improvement from 36 percent a year earlier, it was well behind rival South Korea, where shipyards routinely delivered ahead of schedule the same year.

A new policy approach on business insolvency procedures is being promoted by the European Commission. A new EU recommendation on insolvency proceedings has been adopted by the Commission with the main aim of giving honest entrepreneurs a second chance, the Times of Malta reported.

Shanghai Chaori Solar Energy Science & Technology Co., the first Chinese company to default on corporate bonds onshore, said a bondholder is seeking to force it into bankruptcy restructuring, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. The manufacturer received a letter on April 3 from Shanghai Yihua Metal Materials Ltd. saying the creditor had submitted a petition to Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court, according a filing by Chaori to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange yesterday. Chaori said it doesn’t know whether the court will accept the case and whether the restructuring will proceed.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem was not expecting a warm welcome, and he did not receive one. Seated at the front of a cavernous lecture hall at the University of Cyprus, the Dutch finance minister, who shepherded through the island’s controversial €10bn bailout a year ago as chair of the eurogroup of finance ministers, was harangued by students and faculty alike for what the programme has done to the Cypriot economy, the Financial Times reported. “For something that you say was inevitable, it seems surprisingly ill-prepared,” said Sofronis Clerides, an associate professor of economics.

More people were declared bankrupt in the first three months of this year, than in all of 2013, according to new figures from the Insolvency Service of Ireland. Statistics released today show there were 66 bankruptcies in the first quarter of 2014, compared to 58 for the whole of last year, which had the highest number of new bankruptcies on record. In December the bankruptcy term was reduced from 12 to 3 years, the Irish Times reported. The total debt involved in bankruptcy adjudications in the first quarter of this year was almost €136 million.

Greece's international creditors have agreed to cut its privatization target for the current year, the head of the country's asset-sale agency said Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The asset sales target has been lowered to €1.5 billion ($2.06 billion) in 2014 from a previous figure of €3.5 billion, Ioannis Emiris, chief executive of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, told reporters. The target has also been revised for the next year to €2.3 billion, slightly higher than the previous target of €2 billion.