Headlines

France will refuse a cut in the cost of Ireland’s European bail-out loans at next week’s meeting of eurozone finance ministers as long as Dublin maintains its ultra-low corporate tax rate, the Financial Times reported. Paris appears to be setting itself against a growing European view that Ireland should be given some extra room for manoeuvre as European leaders weigh the need for a new aid package for Greece, which could also involve a second rate cut.

CEC Group and its employees will have a clearer picture of their futures today when management meets administrators to discuss the way forward for one of the company's main businesses, Cairns.com.au reported. CEC Constructions Ltd was placed into voluntary administration on Friday in what chief executive officer Roy Lavis said was part of the group’s survival plan as it struggles with debts of about $90 million. Mr Lavis said it was hoped the company would be bought by the workers in a plan aimed to protect the group, finance companies, staff, directors, creditors and shareholders.

The manufacturing future of Silentnight, the UK’s biggest bedmaker, has been saved after HIG Capital, the US-based private equity firm, bought the company out of administration on Saturday night, the Financial Times reported. But Neil Mernock, chief executive, in effect blamed the Pension Protection Fund for the failure of attempts to win agreement among creditors to support a Company Voluntary Agreement which had offered suppliers 65p in the pound owed.

British house prices suffered their biggest annual fall in 1.5 years in April as worries about the economic outlook deterred buyers, mortgage lender Halifax said, the Irish Times reported. On the month, prices were 1.2 per cent lower, the biggest fall since September 2010 and confounding forecasts for a 0.1 per cent gain. Prices had been flat in March. "Weak confidence amongst households, partly due to uncertainty over the economic outlook, is constraining housing demand and resulting in some downward movement in prices," said Halifax housing economist Martin Ellis.

Government officials from France and Germany went out of their way Monday to stress the need for a unified euro zone even as intensifying worries over Greek debt piled pressure on the currency bloc, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a Europe Day speech, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon on Monday said it's paramount that euro-zone states continue to show solidarity towards one another—signaling France could agree to go further to help Greece meet its funding needs for next year.

Worries about Greece’s intractable debt problem deepened on Monday, stoking fears that the country remains on a path to fiscal disaster and that European leaders do not have a convincing plan to prevent a default, the International Herald Tribune reported. European political leaders as well as the European Central Bank have ruled out any kind of restructuring of Greek debt, saying it would undermine confidence in other countries like Portugal and Ireland and potentially create panic in financial markets.

Junior debt holders should take a loss on their holdings to help rescue an ailing bank, a global bank lobby group said on Monday, Reuters reported. The Institute of International Finance (IIF) backs so-called bank "bail ins" -- whereby losses would be forced on shareholders and bondholders to recapitalise an ailing bank before taxpayers are called upon.

Allied Farmers, which has been reduced to a 'penny-dreadful' stock after putting too high a value on loans acquired from Hanover Finance, has completed the sale of property at Clearwater, near Christchurch, and will use the proceeds to repay debt, The New Zealand Herald reported. The property was among assets acquired from Hanover in December 2009 in a disastrous debt-for-equity swap. The loans have lost more than three-quarters of their $400 million value at the time of the deal, which left Allied shareholders with some 2 billion of near-worthless shares.

Cabinet ministers have agreed to demand that Tokyo Electric Power Co. carry out deeper restructuring so it can secure enough compensation for damage caused by the Fukushima No. 1 power plant but were less certain on whether a new entity should be set up to help it, officials said, The Japan Times reported. The decision to set up the entity, which would provide funds to help the beleaguered utility known as Tepco pay for radiation-related damages, was delayed on Saturday.

European officials are preparing to revamp Greece’s bail-out package after concluding that Athens would be unable to raise money in the markets early next year, as envisaged under a €110bn ($158bn) rescue plan, the Financial Times reported. Eurozone ministers this weekend publicly acknowledged that Greece would probably need additional cash from the European Union or other international institutions. George Osborne, UK chancellor of the exchequer, said changes to the Greek bail-out programme were “inevitable”.