As in other countries, the current economic and financial crisis has already taken its toll on Belgium. The number of bankruptcies has reached record heights. Unemployment is rising and forecasts for 2009 are pessimistic, Legal Week reported. In this context, the Belgian Parliament adopted a new Act on Business Continuity, which came into force on 1 April, 2009. This new Act replaces the former and unsuccessful judicial composition procedure with a more effective and flexible restructuring instrument.

The European Commission said on Friday that it had launched an in-depth investigation into the restructuring of Belgian-French financial group Dexia, Reuters reported. The Commission said in a statement it intended to make sure the restructuring plan would guarantee the long-term viability of the group, hit hard by the financial crisis. But the executive arm of the 27-nation European Union also authorised guarantees worth $16.9 billion from the Belgian and French governments to aid in the sale of FSA, the bank's U.S. subsidiary.

Saab Automobile, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month, will cut 750 jobs at its main factory in southern Sweden in response to falling demand, Bloomberg reported. About 650 of the affected workers are tied to production, while the remaining 100 jobs are administrative positions, Saab spokeswoman Gunilla Gustavs said by telephone from Gothenburg today. Saab has about 4,100 workers, most of them in Trollhaettan, where Saab makes the 9-3 and 9-5 models.

General Motors' German unit Opel could slash 3,500 jobs as part of a plan to cut costs and relaunch as an independent company, GM Europe head Carl-Peter Forster told Bild newspaper. Staff reductions would hopefully not exceed that figure at Opel, which employs around 25,000 workers in Germany, he told the daily on Wednesday. To survive, Opel needs around €3.3 billion ($4.17 billion) in state aid from European governments to save jobs and keep plants open, the company has said.

The European Union's emergency summit on March 2 to discuss growing protectionism is a make-or-break moment for the 27-nation bloc. At stake is its greatest achievement -- the single market for goods, people and capital. A row over France's latest car-industry bailout plan threatens to drive a wedge between member states. How the EU responds will have consequences not just for the EU but for global free trade. Unfortunately, the omens don't look promising. On the face of it, the French plans look like a clear case of state aid--illegal under EU rules.

A high-level meeting over a French plan to offer assistance to its car industry ended on Wednesday night with France insisting that the measures would not be protectionist, but Brussels warning that some restructuring of the sector would be needed, the Financial Times reported. The meeting was scheduled this week between Neelie Kroes, the EU competition commissioner, and Luc Chatel, the French industry minister.

King Albert II of Belgium named a former premier to begin consultations on forming a new government after Prime Minister Yves Leterme was toppled by the financial crisis, Bloomberg reported. Wilfried Martens, 72, who ran nine Belgian coalitions from 1979 to 1992, was tapped by the monarch to take soundings from political leaders and report back “quickly” with recommendations, according to a statement late yesterday. Leterme quit over his cabinet’s role in the breakup of Fortis, knocked from its perch as Belgium’s biggest financial-services firm by the banking crisis.

BNP Paribas bowed to the inevitable Thursday and said it was suspending its takeover of the Belgian financial services company Fortis, following a court ruling that effectively froze the deal, the International Herald Tribune reported. BNP Paribas had offered €14.5 billion, or $21 billion, for Fortis after the Belgian company neared collapse in the aftermath of the implosions of AIG and Lehman Brothers. But the Brussels Court of Appeals found on Dec.

A Belgian appeals court on Friday froze several major deals made by the former Belgian-Dutch bank Fortis NV in October to ward off bankruptcy, Dutch media reported. Dutch national broadcaster NOS said the Brussels Appeals Court reversed earlier decisions upholding the sale of Fortis' operations in the Netherlands to the Dutch state, and Belgian operations to the Belgian state. The deals were not put to shareholders for approval as required under Dutch and Belgian law for transactions involving major operations, and shareholder groups later sued.

Central banks world-wide delivered sweeping interest rate cuts Thursday, even as the continuing turmoil in credit markets means cuts in rates are losing their power to curtail an accelerating global slowdown, The Wall Street Journal reported. Major European central banks, including the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and Sweden's Riksbank joined the central banks of New Zealand and Indonesia in making deep rate cuts. The goal: to stave off deep and painful slowdowns in the wake of financial market turmoil that has squeezed lending globally.