Bidders for German carmaker Opel are being pressed to make last-minute changes to their offers ahead of a meeting on Wednesday that could narrow the field of potential investors in the General Motors unit, Reuters reported. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has been considering offers for Opel from Italy's Fiat, Canadian auto parts company Magna International and Belgium-listed industrial holding RHJ International.

Court-appointed administrators overseeing Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s global bankruptcy proceedings have signed a multilateral agreement allowing them to share information and coordinate the insolvency process as the financial services firm wends its way through more than 75 distinct bankruptcy filings, Bankruptcy Law360 reported.

Receivers appointed to two companies developing the first stage of Queenstown's $1 billion Kawarau Falls Station six-hotel development say it is too early to know whether the project can be completed, The National Business Review. Yesterday two companies associated with the development, Melview (Kawarau Falls Station) Investments Ltd and Melview (Kawarau Falls Station) Development Ltd, were put into receivership by Australian lender BOS International. Receiver Brendon Gibson of KordaMentha said, "it's too early for us to make any statements around that.

The global financial crisis has tarnished the dollar and will prompt reserve managers to diversify, but the U.S. currency will retain its dominant international role, a senior Chinese official said in remarks published on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Guan Tao from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which invests China's $1.95 trillion in currency reserves, likened the risk of U.S. inflation and dollar depreciation to "blocked dams" that threatened the stability of the global monetary system in the medium term.

Ailing carmaker Ssangyong Motor on Monday it will proceed with restructuring plans and push for an early sales of idle assets to secure enough funds to operate factories, launch new cars and boost liquidity, The Chosun Ilbo reported. Ssangyong will seek an additional mortgage of W330 billion (US$1=W1,251) from the Korea Development Bank and relocate the Seoul Office from Posteel Tower to the Poongrim Building nearby to save over W1 billion in rent a year.

Credit-ratings firm Fitch Ratings says China's banks are showing early signs of asset-quality deterioration amid a torrent of lending to help fund government stimulus projects, The Wall Street Journal reported. New loans totaling 5.17 trillion yuan, or $757.5 billion, in the first four months of this year have already exceeded the 4.91 trillion yuan in loans made in all of 2008. Amid the credit surge, government officials have warned of rising risks.

Taiwan's economy contracted by a record 10.24% in the first quarter from a year earlier as Western consumers refrained from buying the island's exports, prompting the government to revise down its growth forecast for 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported. The first-quarter decline in gross domestic product--the third consecutive quarterly retreat for the export-oriented economy--exceeded the 9.05% fall expected and followed the island's revised 8.61% contraction in the fourth quarter of 2008. Taiwan, home to technology-goods producers like Acer Inc.

Sony, which has 2,500 suppliers of components and materials, is to cut the number by half in a “life-changing” effort to streamline its cumbersome procurement network and cut costs by about 500 billion yen (£3.3 billion), the Times Online reported. The move by the entertainment and electronics group marks another shift in the Japanese business environment which, over the past six months, has undergone more radical changes than at any other time in the past 20 years.

Alliance Bank, Kazakhstan’s fourth- biggest lender, is in default after missing a principal payment of more than $10 million, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association said. A committee of credit swaps dealers and asset managers voted unanimously that a “failure-to-pay credit event” occurred after UBS AG asked for a ruling on May 15, ISDA said today on its Web site. The decision will trigger a settlement by auction of credit-default swaps linked to the Almaty-based lender, Bloomberg reported.

After bleeding money for years, 186 jobs have been cut at textile company Lane Walker Rudkin (LWR) as receivers try to sort out its dire financial state, The New Zealand Herald reported. LWR was last month placed in receivership and several of the company's unprofitable sites around the country have been targeted for closure or mergers. Changes involve 186 of the group's 470 staff being made redundant - 102 in Christchurch, 61 in Greytown, 19 in Pahiatua and four in Auckland. The receivers said there were no plans for redundancies at the Timaru plant.