Eight English language schools operated in Australia by the GEOS group have gone into voluntary administration, leaving about 2300 foreign students unsure of their future, The Sydney Morning Herald reported on an Australian Associated Press story. Justin Walsh and Adam Nikitins of Ernst & Young have been appointed administrators to nine companies operating the schools in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Cairns. They have about 390 employees and international students from a number of different countries.

Greece’s debt crisis returned to financial markets with a vengeance as agitated investors demanded the highest premiums to buy its government bonds since the launch of European monetary union over a decade ago. The yield spread between 10-year Greek bonds and benchmark German Bunds widened dramatically on Wednesday, by almost 0.7 percentage points at one point, in what one trader called a “capitulation” to sellers worried about Greece’s ability to refinance its debt.

Greece is wooing China to buy up to €25 billion of government bonds, a move that underlines Beijing’s growing financial power, as Athens struggles to fund soaring public debt, The Irish Times reported. Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank, has been promoting a Greek bond sale to Beijing and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (Safe), which manages China’s $2,400 billion foreign exchange reserves, said people familiar with the issue.

Several Chinese banks have ordered some branches to suspend new lending for the rest of this month, people familiar with the situation said on Tuesday, as concerns rippled around markets in the region that China may take more aggressive action to rein in bank credit that is fuelling the country's rapid growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. The moves by some banks to temporarily choke off credit come amid reports of a fresh deluge of new lending in the first several weeks of this year after a year of blow-out lending in 2009.

A leading credit rating agency threatened Tuesday to downgrade Japan’s rating unless the world’s second-largest economy took more steps to rein in its mounting public debt, The New York Times reported. The warning by Standard & Poor’s, which cut its outlook for Japan’s sovereign rating for the first time since 2002, reflected concerns that the government’s efforts to trim its mounting public debt were proceeding too slowly. The Japanese economy has emerged from its worst recession since World War II, but is still reeling.

Ericsson said it would cut 1,500 jobs as part of its broad restructuring plan. In addition, the vendor's profit plunged 92 percent in the fourth quarter, hit by higher restructuring costs and weaker sales, FierceWireless reported. The Swedish company reported net profit of $43.4 million in the quarter, down from $539.4 million in the year-ago quarter. Sales slumped 13 percent to $8.08 billion, down from $9.29 billion in the fourth quarter last year. Networks sales fell 16 percent in the quarter and professional services sales were flat year-over-year.

Bank of Japan policy makers are prepared to consider expanding an emergency-loan program for banks and increasing purchases of government debt should the recovery falter, people with knowledge of the matter said, Bloomberg reported. The central bank’s board will leave interest rates and its lending program unchanged tomorrow, 16 of 17 economists said in a Bloomberg News survey.

All Nippon Airways Co. sees the bankruptcy of Japan Airlines Corp. as an opportunity to grow its international business significantly and emerge even stronger than its larger rival, a top executive said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal Friday. "We need to get stronger when they are sick," said Keisuke Okada, an ANA board member and executive vice president of alliances and international affairs.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) placed the Apex Rural Bank (Bulacan), Inc. under receivership, the first one to be taken over by the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. this year, BusinessWorld reported. "Notice is hereby given that the Monetary Board decided to prohibit the Apex Rural Bank from doing business in the Philippines and to place its assets and affairs under receivership," it said in a directive. The supervision and examination sector of the BSP, however, declined to disclose details on the Apex Rural Bank’s financial condition.

A pillar of Japan Inc. founded in 1951 to help the country rise from the ashes of World War II, Asia's largest airline by revenue sought court protection from creditors on Tuesday to grapple with a debt load of $25 billion, a level well above its cash flow, The Wall Street Journal reporeted. Japan's new government played a big role in steering the company toward bankruptcy protection and portrayed the moves—despite the new subsidies—as an early sign of how economic policy making is changing since the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost power four months ago.