Spain

Codere SA, the Spanish gambling company that last week reported its worst earnings in more than two years, sunk to a record after Moody’s downgraded its credit rating on concern it may default on loans by the end of June, Bloomberg reported. Codere, which depends on Argentina for more than one-third of its revenue, reported a 21 percent drop in first-quarter earnings after an anti-smoking law went into effect in that country. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization amounted to 62.1 million euros ($79.9 million), the lowest in 10 quarters.

Many duped savers at Spanish lender Bankia are shunning a state-supervised compensation scheme in favor of expensive lawsuits, prolonging a mis-selling scandal and complicating efforts to restore faith in the banking system, Reuters reported. The disputes over mis-selling at Bankia and other nationalized banks have created a major headache for the government as it tries to take the next step in their rescue, imposing large losses on holders of junior debt.

Spanish judges this week sent the strongest signal yet that they intend to crack down on former executives at bailed-out banks by putting the ex-president of Caja Madrid into custody in the first detention of a top financier since the financial crisis began, the Irish Times reported. Amid intensifying anger at a banking crisis that last year forced Spain to accept a European rescue for its lenders, Miguel Blesa, the 65-year-old former head of the bank, the precursor to the rescued Bankia, will remain in jail ahead of trial until he posts bail of €2.5 million.

Promotora de Informaciones SA, the publisher of El Pais newspaper, wants to reorganize the terms of about 2.9 billion euros ($3.8 billion) of debt, according to a person familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported. Prisa, as Spain’s biggest media company is known, plans to propose terms of the restructuring to lenders as soon as next month, the person said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private. The unprofitable media company is reopening talks as about 1.28 billion euros of loans near an initial maturity date in March 2014, according to its latest annual report.

Even in a record year for Spanish bankruptcies, the filing by Pescanova, a household local name that farms, catches and processes fish, stands out not just for scale, but for the opaque culture and boardroom dysfunction it has revealed, Reuters reported in an insight. The April 15 insolvency filing mentions debts of 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion), but financial sources who have had dealings with the company say total debt is probably more than double that amount, potentially making it the country's third-largest bankruptcy.

Unemployment in Spain and France has jumped to new highs, data showed Thursday, lending ammunition to a growing chorus calling for easing the euro zone's austerity drive as the cure for its debt crisis because of the high social fallout, The Wall Street Journal reported. The jobless rate in Spain rose sharply to 27.2% of the workforce in the first quarter, the highest level since records began in the 1970s. In France, the number of registered job seekers who are fully unemployed rose to more than 3.2 million, topping a previous record set in 1997.

A Spanish court accepted Spanish fishing company Pescanova's insolvency petition on Thursday and said it would name independent administrators to replace the board of directors, Reuters reported. "We declare Pescanova in insolvency," the Pontevedra mercantile court in northwestern Galicia said in a ruling published on Thursday. Galicia-based Pescanova, which catches, processes and packages fish, filed for insolvency this month on 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) of debt and has yet to present audited 2012 accounts, missing a March 1 deadline.

Defying the conservative central government in Madrid, Andalusia this month implemented measures that will temporarily stop evictions and penalize banks and real-estate firms for holding hundreds of thousands of vacant properties, The Wall Street Journal reported. It favors people hurt by Spain's recession over of the interests of the country's lenders, including many that have received government bailouts, The Wall Street Journal reported. Whether the action will stand up in court is still in question.

Spain will on Friday reveal plans for a fresh overhaul of its pension system, labour market, service sector and fiscal management, as Madrid prepares to soften its austerity programme in favour of a new focus on structural reforms, the Financial Times reported. The government of Mariano Rajoy hopes the package of measures will bolster investor confidence in the Spanish economy, which is scarred by a two-year recession and soaring unemployment.

Spanish fishing firm Pescanova sank deeper into scandal on Tuesday as shareholder anger mounted over accounting failings and the chairman's undeclared sale of shares in the period leading up to insolvency proceedings, Reuters reported. Pescanova, a household name in Spain and one of the world's largest fishing groups, filed for insolvency on April 15 on at least 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) of debt run up to fuel expansion before economic crisis hit its earnings.