Headlines

Finance ministers of the European Union were deadlocked Tuesday over how to create a single banking supervisor for the euro zone, delaying a decision on a new system that is supposed to prevent future financial crises, the International Herald Tribune reported.

BTA, Kazakhstan's third-largest bank by assets, has won a vote by its shareholders, dominated by the state sovereign wealth fund, to restructure its $11.2 billion of debt, the second such agreement with creditors in as many years, Reuters reported. In its first restructuring in 2010 BTA had cut net debt by two thirds to $4.2 billion in a deal that bought sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna an 81.5-percent stake.

A US appeals court has rejected a request from defaulted creditors led by Elliott Associates, a US fund, to require Argentina to post security of at least $250m by Monday to demonstrate its willingness to pay any judgment in their favour, the Financial Times reported. The ruling from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals means there will be no change to a schedule it laid down last week for the thorny case, which has pit the government against funds it decries as “vultures” and sparked fears of a new Argentine default.

Iranian group Tadbir Energy will submit a bid for the Petit-Couronne oil refinery from insolvent owner Petroplus at a court hearing on Tuesday, French daily Le Figaro said, without citing its sources. Tadbir Energy, a unit of the Imam Khomeini foundation, will offer to buy France's oldest refinery with a guarantee to keep the 550 staff it employs, the paper added. Iranian oil imports are forbidden since July in the European Union, the paper said.

Representing the largest settlement ever by an auditor in a Canadian securities class-action case, Ernst & Young Canada agreed to pay $117-million to investors of Sino-Forest Corp., the Chinese timber firm whose shares collapsed in 2011 amid sensational fraud allegations, The Globe and Mail reported. The precedent-setting agreement, which still requires court approval, already marks the largest compensation payment ever in a securities class-action case involving a company listed solely in Canada.

A week after settling on a debt-relief plan for Greece, euro-zone finance ministers met again Monday to discuss two other bailouts in the works, one for Cyprus and another for Spanish banks, and review progress on a key piece of the Greek plan, a debt buyback the Greek government launched Monday morning, The Wall Street Journal reported. The buyback is the most important part of last week's plan for cutting Greece's debt.

Greece's debt agency launched a multibillion-euro offer to retire roughly half the debt the country owes to private creditors, part of the latest effort to trim a towering debt burden, The Wall Street Journal reported. Bond markets reacted positively after Greece signaled it would pay a slight premium to buy back that debt, but the higher price and the limited size of the offer raise questions about whether the country will be able to cut its debt as much as its European and international creditors hope.

Much to the chagrin of the eurozone, Britain’s top industry prospers from serving a currency union the UK will not join. One senior EU official said “keeping an amicable distance is not an option”; financial services is the sector most entwined with the single currency and its nascent banking union, the Financial Times reported. The City’s golden ticket is the EU single market, a grand and unfinished scheme to eliminate barriers to the flow of capital, people and goods. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Square Mile blossomed as majority rule in the EU prised open continental markets.

Ireland's government must detail Wednesday tough spending cuts and tax increases in its budget for 2013 which could strain the public's grudging acceptance of the austerity imposed by an international bailout, as the country continues to wrestle with its worst-ever debt crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported. Since the property market collapsed in 2008 bringing down the country's banking sector, Ireland has brought in €25 billion ($32 billion) in austerity measures, and each successive budget forces increasingly painful choices.

Auckland-based organic food company Pitango has been placed into receivership along with its Australian parent company, which is understood to owe millions of dollars to its creditors, Stuff.co.nz reported. Pitango, with around 25 staff, makes a range of soups, curries, risottos, sauces and pastas which are sold in supermarkets. Receivers Ferrier Hodgson said in a statement that Pitango's parent company, Gourmet Food Holdings, had been placed into receivership and that included Pitango, Australian tomato sauce firm Rosella, and Australian biscuit firm Waterwheel.