City Center, the $8 billion-plus resort under construction in Las Vegas, won a crucial victory when its lenders and owners struck a deal that guarantees the project will be finished.

Markets news on stocks, currencies and oil.

 US personal income declined 0.3 percent in March. Wages and salaries, the largest component of personal income, fell 0.5 percent after falling 0.4 percent in February. Proprietors’ income (mainly from partnerships and sole proprietorships) turned down.

AIB Bank (Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c) Ireland’s biggest bank announced today that the Chairman, Group Chief Executive, Group Finance Director are to resign.

Figures released today by InsolvencyJournal.ie show that Irish insolvencies for the first four months of 2009 were 486, compared to 193 for Jan-April 2008 and 107 during the same 2007 period.  This shows an increase of 152% from the 2008 four-month figures and a 354% increase from the 2007 data. (See graph below for monthly analysis).

Merchandise trade volumes of the Group of Seven (G7) took an unprecedented drop in the last quarter of 2008 compared with the previous quarter, according to the OECD, the think-tank for 30 mainly developed countries including Ireland. However, provisional monthly data for January and February 2009 measured in value terms suggest a slowing down of the rate of decline.

The Central Bank says today that the net increase in Irish residential mortgage credit during the first three months of 2009 was €428 million. The comparable figure for the first three months of 2008 was €2.6 billion. The net monthly increase of €20 million in March is historically low, and contributed to the decline in the annual rate of increase in residential mortgages (inclusive of securitised mortgages) to 4.2 per cent in March, from 4.9 per cent in February.

Eurozone annual inflation is expected to be 0.6% in April 2009 according to a flash estimate issued by Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union. It was also 0.6% in March.

Markets news on stocks, currencies and commodities.

Independent News and Media today reported a 26% fall in pretax profits before exceptional items of €211.7 million for 2008. The Dublin-headqaurtered multinational media company also said its has been unable to secure new borrowing facilities to fund the maturity of a €200 million bond due to mature on May 18th. IN&M’s loss for the year was  €161.4 million.