Headlines

Loss-making Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. has made a fresh appeal to its lenders for additional loans of INR2 billion ($40.59 million), less than a fourth of what it had asked earlier, in another effort to solve its severe cash crunch problem, a senior executive at one of the lending banks said Saturday, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported. "Most of Kingfisher's banks have declared its debt a non-performing asset, so the airline has asked the few banks which have not," the executive told Dow Jones Newswires without elaborating. He did not wish to be identified due to confidentiality norms.

With its massive austerity measures, Portugal has become the poster child of the troika of the EU, ECB and IMF. But the country is still stuck in a deep recession and it is unclear how it will return to growth. It may need to rely on European loans for years to come, Spiegel Online reported. Portugal's prime minister expects government employees at their desks and working on Entrudo, the traditional high point of the country's Carnival celebrations, which falls on this Tuesday.

Holders of a junior-ranking Dexia bond are escaping the rough treatment meted out to bondholders of low-ranking Irish bank notes after Dexia Bank Belgium announced it would buy back a deeply subordinated issue at 25% of par, Reuters reported. While the tender price set by Dexia Banque Belgium may appear less generous than what other European banks have recently offered for their subordinated debt, it is more generous than what subordinated debt holders of Irish bank paper were offered in 2010/2011.

After months of tense negotiations, euro zone finance ministers worked deep into the night Monday to try to agree on a second giant bailout to bring Greece back from the brink of default, subject to strict conditions and in exchange for yet more severe austerity measures, the International Herald Tribune reported. Under the bailout terms, Greece is supposed to reduce its debt to 120 percent of gross domestic product by 2020, from about 160 percent now.

Top European banks, responding to new regulations and wary of lending, are stashing increasingly large sums of money at central banks around the world in a collective flight to safety. The eight giant European banks that have disclosed their annual results in recent weeks reported holding a total of about $816 billion in cash and deposits at central banks as of Dec. 31, according to calculations by The Wall Street Journal. That is up 50% from a year earlier, when the same banks were holding roughly $543 billion.

India's aviation regulator asked Kingfisher Airlines to explain why it has cancelled a large number of flights since Saturday, while the government again ruled out providing any aid to the loss-making carrier, Reuters reported. Kingfisher has cancelled 32 out of the 240 flights that it operates each day, the airlines said on Saturday, adding that it expected to return to full service within days.

Royal Dutch Shell is in talks with bankrupt refiner Petroplus to process crude oil temporarily at its Petit-Couronne facility in France, a union official said on Monday, Reuters reported. The refinery would process crude oil for Shell while a buyer is sought for the installation in northern France, under a draft deal that may be signed this week, said Nicolas Vincent of the CGT union. Shell confirmed that it was in talks on the future of the refinery, which it used to own.

China took action to boost bank lending as it seeks to fine-tune economic policy to support growth, without giving up its recent gains in controlling inflation and property prices, The Wall Street Journal reported. The People's Bank of China said on Saturday that it will cut banks' reserve requirement ratio by 0.5 percentage point, effective Feb. 24, in a move to help boost liquidity and support the economy. The reserve requirement ratio is the percentage of deposits that banks must hold in reserve rather than lend out.

Western investors in Japan's disgraced Olympus have accused its banks of trying to take control of the boardroom by stealth, amid media reports that the firm's major creditors are set to install their own appointees in the top jobs, Reuters reported. Foreign investors in the maker of cameras and medical equipment, engulfed last year by a $1.7 billion accounting fraud, have been arguing for a complete renewal of the board, including outside talent untainted by the scandal.

Optimism is growing that Greece has finally done enough to secure a second bailout after it set out extra budget savings, but the moves failed to ease tensions with EU paymaster Germany, Reuters reported. Time is running out for Greece to seal the 130 billion euro (107 billion pound) rescue and avoid bankruptcy, but Greek officials hope euro zone finance ministers will sign the deal off on Monday - a month before Athens needs the money to make 14.5 billion euros of debt repayments due on March 20.