Spain

Spain's La Seda de Barcelona, LSB, which makes plastic bottles in Europe, Turkey and North Africa, said on Monday it would begin insolvency proceedings after failing to reach a deal with creditors, Reuters reported. A record 2,500 Spanish companies squeezed by a deep recession filed for insolvency in the first three months of this year, hurting lenders as they take ever bigger provisions against losses on loans, eating into profits.

During Spain's economic boom of the past decade, one of its largest gambling enterprises followed the lead of other Spanish corporate heavyweights and piled up debt to expand in Latin America. The wager hasn't paid off, The Wall Street Journal reported. Regulatory setbacks in Mexico and Argentina and a recession that is shrinking its market at home have Codere SA CDR.MC -5.42% scrambling to restructure a growing debt burden.

After five years battling its most severe downturn since the Spanish civil war, Uralita felt that it was running out of options, the Financial Times reported in an analysis. The building materials supplier faced debt repayments this year and next. And with no recovery in sight, Uralita’s banks were not in a lending mood. In 2007, the family-owned company boasted healthy profits and more than €1bn in sales. But it lost money in 2012, with revenues down 40 per cent, due to the collapse in the Spanish construction market.

Madrid-listed developer Realia, slated for sale by its owners, infrastructure conglomerate FCC and nationalised bank Bankia, has extended an €847m loan with creditor banks as part of a plan to restructure debt and avoid insolvency, Property Investor Europe reported. FCC in March announced plans to refinance Realia debt ahead of a planned sale, the first step in the group’s new strategy to cut costs and debt and focus on infrastructure and environmental businesses, according to news agency Reuters.

Spain's central bank called for a suspension of the minimum wage in selected cases, saying a year-old overhaul of labor laws had made the economy more competitive but failed to encourage hiring, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Bank of Spain's recommendation, though not binding on the conservative government, reflects growing concern among policy makers about the country's 27% unemployment rate.

Shares in state-owned lender Bankia could slide another 30 percent despite a multi-billion-euro cash injection, analysts say, with little hope of a quick recovery as tough business conditions and a challenging restructuring plan weigh, Reuters reported. More than 11 billion shares issued as part of a 15.5-billion-euro ($20 billion) recapitalisation of the Spanish bank are to start trading on Tuesday at 0700 GMT in what was meant to be a new beginning after a 24-billion-euro bailout last year.

A Spanish High Court judge has charged the former chairman of fishing firm Pescanova, Manuel Fernandez de Sousa, with falsifying information and insider trading, according to a court document published on Thursday, Reuters reported. Pescanova, one of the world's largest fishing firms, filed for insolvency in April and the dealings of Sousa, who sold a large stake in the firm in the months before the insolvency petition, have come under scrutiny.

Germany has agreed to give jobs or apprenticeships to about 5,000 young unemployed Spaniards every year, under a deal signed by labour ministers from both countries in Madrid on Tuesday, the Financial Times reported. The deal reflects rising concern in Berlin and other European capitals about a looming social crisis in countries such as Spain, where the rate of youth unemployment now stands at 57 per cent. But it also highlights Germany’s growing need for qualified workers, which is fuelled both by demographic changes and by the recent strong performance of the German economy.

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.