Headlines

The National Asset Management Agency has unveiled its deferred mortgage payment plan in an attempt to sell residential properties on its books and stimulate sales in the moribund property market, the Irish Times reported. The initiative is designed to encourage potential buyers who can secure mortgage approval but who postpone their purchase fearing that property prices will fall further. Nama listed 115 houses in 12 developments in Dublin, Meath and Cork where the scheme will be piloted before the possibility of being introduced on more properties.

MF Global's European administrator KPMG is teaming up with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Lehman Brothers's administrator, to try to speed up the return of assets and cash to former clients of both failed brokers, Reuters reported. KPMG said on Tuesday it will work with PWC to establish whether unsecured funds can be "traced" and treated as if they were secured, following a ruling by Britain's Supreme Court.

Political tumult in Greece stoked new worries about the fragility of Europe's monetary union on Monday, as talks to form a new government among the winners of the weekend's elections quickly fell apart in Athens, The Wall Street Journal reported. The collapse revived fears that political turmoil will keep Greece from meeting the stiff terms of its European bailout, ultimately leading to its exit from the euro zone, a move that would threaten the euro's future and reverberate through other troubled economies, such as Spain and Italy.

Spain is planning a state bail-out of Bankia, the country’s third biggest bank by assets, in a move likely to involve the injection of billions of euros of public money into the troubled lender, the Financial Times reported. In an abrupt reversal of policy, the Spanish government, which had previously insisted that no additional state money would be needed to clean up the country’s banking sector, confirmed that an intervention was being prepared.

Brazil's debt-laden power distributor, Celpa, proposed a 40 percent reduction in the value of its liabilities as part of a debt renegotiation proposal seeking to stave off bankruptcy, according to a court document released on Monday, Reuters reported. Celpa, controlled by electricity holding company Rede Energia, plans to raise 650 million reais ($337 million) through the sale of local debt notes that can be converted into shares after a certain period, the document said. The plan also includes Celpa's obtaining 200 million reais in fresh credit lines through the end of 2013.

Dubai Legal proceedings in the $2.2 billion (Dh8.08 billion) debt restructuring of Dubai World's shipbuilding unit have been delayed due to a court challenge in Singapore over a rig-building contract, a lawyer said yesterday, gulfnews.com reported. Drydocks World sought insolvency protection last month and is using a special tribunal in Dubai to force creditors to sign up to the plan. It also filed legal proceedings in Singapore to push through the proposal.

Micron Technology won the right to negotiate exclusively to buy Elpida Memory Inc after offering more than 200 billion yen ($2.5 billion) for the failed Japanese chipmaker, according to a source with direct knowledge of the deal that would more than double the U.S. company's global market share, Reuters reported. By acquiring Elpida, Micron would boost its market share to 25 percent, surpassing South Korea's SK Hynix and becoming the second-biggest maker of DRAM memory chips used in personal computers, according to U.S. technology research firm IHS iSuppli. Samsung Electronics is the largest.

The National Asset Management Agency has intensified its legal efforts to seize international assets from bankrupt developer Ray Grehan by seeking to enter its judgment of €270 million last year from the Irish courts in the US, the Irish Times reported. Documents filed in the New York State Supreme Court show the State loans agency sought to enter the judgment for $351 million, the US dollar equivalent of the Irish court judgment, against the developer at the end of March.

French voters elected Socialist Party candidate François Hollande as president Sunday, choosing a national leader who has pledged to shift the burden of economic hardship onto the rich and to resolve the protracted euro sovereign-debt crisis by softening the current prescription of austerity, The Wall Street Journal reported. With his victory over conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in the second and final round of voting, Mr.

The National Asset Management Agency’s efforts to sell off British properties outside London by the end of 2013 has been complicated by news that the UK’s commercial property market is in its worst downturn since records began, the Irish Times reported. The value of shops, offices and warehouses is 31 per cent below the September 2007 peak, according to a survey by Investment Property Databank (IPD), while prices fell by a further 0.7 per cent in the first three months of this year.