Headlines

French President Francois Hollande's plan to lower the minimum retirement age to 60 from 62 is fully financed through higher payroll charges, the government said. The cost in the first full year is €1.1 billion, peaking at €3 billion in 2017, the government's spokeswoman, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, said after the weekly Cabinet meeting, the Irish Times reported. The change, which takes effect on November 1st and involves those who started work as teenagers, will add no more than 110,000 people a year to the retirement rolls, the government said in a statement.

Equatorial Energia, a Brazilian power holding company, and private-equity fund GP Investiments expressed interest in buying all or part of debt-laden power distributor Celpa, according to a securities filing on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Celpa, a unit of power company Rede Energia serving the northern state of Pará, filed for bankruptcy protection in February, citing a deterioration in its finances. The company presented a debt restructuring plan last month to a court in that state to win Celpa more time to pay its debt.

Spain has made its most explicit call to date for European institutions to recapitalise the country’s banks amid concerns about its own ability to raise the billions of euros needed on sovereign bond markets, the Financial Times reported. Cristóbal Montoro, budget minister in the centre-right government, sent jitters through financial markets on Tuesday when he admitted that the high perceived risk of Spanish sovereign debt meant Spain “does not have the door to the markets open”.

Kuwait's Global Investment House is expected to receive approval on Thursday to delay the repayment of bonds worth 95 million dinars ($338.6 million) to November from June, two sources familiar with the matter said, Reuters reported. "Bondholders have verbally agreed to the extension. The Thursday meeting will make it official," one banker, who asked not to be named, said.

The country’s two main banks, Bank of Ireland and AIB, may struggle to meet the target of sanctioning €3.5 billion in new loans to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) set for each lender, according to the head of the Credit Review Office John Trethowan, the Irish Times reported.

A growing number of lawmakers are pushing for greater control over the Bank of Japan, just 14 years after the central bank first won its independence, as a strong yen and runaway deficits darken Japan's economic prospects, The Wall Street Journal reported. The moves come as politicians across the spectrum, and many economists, complain that the BOJ isn't acting aggressively enough to combat the country's persistent deflation, while mammoth borrowing limits the scope of fiscal policy to boost growth.

A slew of recent statistics confirm that China’s growth is slowing at a faster pace than expected, forcing anxious policymakers to debate which levers to pull to revive the economic juggernaut and preserve the ruling Communist Party’s last major pillar of legitimacy, The Washington Post reported. Unlike in past slowdowns, Chinese officials appear far less confident this time about what to do. Facing unpalatable choices — each carrying risks — the country’s top leaders have sent out confusing signals and statements in recent days. The crisis is coming at a perilous time here.

A senior BTA Bank executive said his signatures were forged last year and used to backdate documents in the months the Kazakh lender sought to staunch a capital deficit that forced its second debt restructuring in December, according to three people directly familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported. The official, who served on the bank’s management board, filed a complaint after discovering the fraudulent use of his electronic signatures in May 2011, the people said, declining to be identified because the information isn’t public.

The Portuguese government will inject €6.6bn into three of the country’s largest banks, becoming the latest eurozone country to tap international bailout funding for an undercapitalised financial sector, the Financial Times reported. Vítor Gaspar, Portuguese finance minister, said the funds would ensure that Banco Commercial Portugues, Banco BPI and state-owned Caixa Geral de Depósitos met tough new capital requirements set by the European Banking Authority.

European Union and French officials squared off against Germany on Monday over how best to help Spain’s ailing banks, drawing lines in the debate over the latest challenge to the euro zone, the International Herald Tribune reported. Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, and Pierre Moscovici, the French finance minister, offered cautious endorsement at a news conference in Brussels for the idea of letting Europe’s bailout funds inject money directly into troubled banks.