Debt-laden engineer Abengoa said on Thursday it had agreed a draft rescue plan with creditors to cut debt and inject fresh cash, in the latest attempt to avoid what could be Spain's biggest bankruptcy. Loss-making Abengoa, which started out 70 years ago as an engineering business in Seville and expanded into clean energy by taking on huge debts, entered pre-insolvency proceedings last year when lenders refused to extend credit lines.

Abengoa's majority shareholder is ready to have its stake diluted to around 5 percent in a bid to receive new emergency cash and facilitate a debt restructuring deal, four sources close to the talks between the firm and its creditors said. The sources said creditor banks and bondholders had set two conditions prior to discussing a debt-for-equity swap, a potential haircut and the injection of new liquidity to save the energy firm from becoming Spain's biggest ever bankruptcy.

Debt-laden Spanish energy group Abengoa has appointed a new chairman to try to distance the firm's management from its main shareholder and facilitate a debt restructuring, Reuters reported. The Seville-based company is racing to reach an agreement with its banks and bondholders by March 28, when it would risk a full-blown insolvency process after piling up debts of almost 9.4 billion euros ($10 billion). Antonio Fornieles Melero will become executive chairman, replacing Jose Abascal, the company said in a statement to Spain's stock exchange regulator.

Abengoa SA, the Spanish renewable-energy company scrambling to avoid bankruptcy, reported a 1.2 billion-euro ($1.3 billion) loss for 2015 after its business was revalued amid a financial restructuring process, Bloomberg News reported. The Seville-based company shifted to a loss after posting net income of 125.3 million euros the previous year, according to a regulatory filing Monday. The loss was mainly due to “negative impacts” of 878 million euros, related to a “viability plan” developed by adviser Alvarez & Marsal, according to the filing.

Indebted Spanish energy firm Abengoa, on the brink of becoming the country's largest ever bankruptcy, does not have enough cash to pay February wages, its chairman told local employees in an emailed letter on Friday. According to the document, seen by Reuters, Jose Abascal also said negotiations between the firm and creditors over a wide-ranging refinancing deal were close to the finish line and he hoped the situation could be resolved "in the next days." An Abengoa spokeswoman declined to comment.

In 2013 GSO, a hedge fund backed by the private equity group Blackstone, made a loan to a Spanish gambling company. The terms of the loan were designed so that whatever happened, GSO would make a profit on credit derivatives it had bought as insurance against a debt default by the company, the Financial Times reported. Now GSO is accusing a rival of adopting a similar strategy in a battle over the debt of Norske Skog, a distressed Norwegian paper company.

To understand why Europe is having if not another banking crisis then at least a serious banking wobble, you need look no further than Bankia. The Spanish lender came to symbolise everything that went wrong in Spain during the crisis. And it is doing the same again in 2016, the Financial Times reported. Bankia was the highest-profile casualty of Spain’s property market collapse and subsequent meltdown in the banking sector.

Moody’s has given troubled Spanish renewable energy group Abengoa a small but much needed vote of confidence at a crucial stage in its fight for survival, saying its underlying operating business is still “viable” although the ratings agency also acknowledges that the company could still end up insolvent, fastFT reported. Abengoa spelled out earlier this week that it needs €826m of cash this year to stay on its feet, plus a further €304m in 2017. These sums don’t include contributions from sales of assets.

Indebted Spanish energy group Abengoa needs 826 million euros ($922 million) of fresh cash to make it until the end of the year and a further 304 million euros in 2017, the company said. The engineering and renewable energy company could become the country's biggest-ever bankruptcy if it fails to agree on a wide-ranging debt restructuring with creditor banks and bondholders by March 28, Reuters reported.

Spanish Abengoa has asked its creditors for a loan of up to 750 million euros ($843 million) to keep it afloat while its lenders discuss a financial plan to avoid it becoming Spain's biggest bankruptcy, a source close to the talks said. "Abengoa has asked for 650 million to 750 million euros in additional liquidity," the source said on Wednesday, adding that this was on top of around 160 million euros Abengoa is requesting from bondholders.