Europe

Fiat Group CEO Sergio Marchionne will become the chief executive of Chrysler after the U.S. automaker emerges from bankruptcy, a Fiat spokesman confirmed Thursday. Marchionne, the 56-year-old dual Canadian and Italian citizen, has been tipped for the job since the Italian automaker reached a deal to take a 20-percent stake in the bankrupt Chrysler, The Associated Press reported. Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli has said he would step down when the bankruptcy is complete, which would make room for Marchionne. U.S.

Europe’s central banks are $40 billion poorer than they might have been after they followed a British move taken 10 years ago on Thursday to shrink the Bank of England’s gold reserves, analysis by the Financial Times has shown. London’s announcement on May 7 1999 that it would sell a large share of the Bank’s gold reserves in favour of assets offering a return, such as government bonds, was the high water mark of so-called “anti-gold” sentiment among European central banks.

Porsche SE’s controlling shareholders, the Porsche and Piech families, plan to meet in Salzburg, Austria today to hash out how to combine the sports-car maker with Volkswagen AG and reduce €9 billion ($12 billion) of debt, according to two people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported. The proposals under consideration include merging the carmakers and finding an investor to buy a stake in the combined company or selling the Porsche AG automotive unit to Volkswagen in return for cash and shares, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private.

American International Group Inc. is close to selling its Japanese headquarters for about $1 billion, in a deal that would mark one of the largest divestitures the insurance company has made to pay off its government debt, people familiar with the matter said. At least two suitors have been vying for the property, but the expected buyer is a Japanese insurance company, The Wall Street Journal reported. AIG owes the U.S. government about $45 billion as part of a rescue package that could total as much as $173.3 billion.

Russian miner Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest nickel producer, is seeking to reschedule debts linked to the 2007 takeover of Canada's LionOre, London's Independent on Sunday reported. Norilsk declined to comment when contacted by Reuters after the newspaper reported it "is looking to ease the terms of the loan taken out on its $6.4 billion purchase of Canadian rival LionOre in 2007". The London offices of investment banks Rothschild and Lazard have been approached by Norilsk to help "sort out its debt difficulties", the Independent on Sunday reported.

The European Union said Monday that Europe is suffering ''a deep and widespread recession'' and that unemployment will rise sharply over the coming two years, The New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. The European Commission said both the 27-nation EU and the 16 countries that use the euro currency will shrink by 4 percent this year, more than double its January estimates, when it forecast a 1.8 percent contraction for the EU and a 1.9 percent decline for the euro area.

Italian automaker Fiat SpA's next project is a deal with Germany's Opel after a landmark alliance with U.S. car maker Chrysler, Fiat's chief executive said in an interview published on Friday. Sergio Marchionne told La Stampa newspaper that Fiat also remained committed to Italy but needed to work with the government and unions on "structural problems". Fiat sealed an industry-changing deal with Chrysler, the smallest of Detroit's Big Three automakers, on Thursday. Fiat will take an initial 20 percent stake in Chrysler, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

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.

BTA Bank, Kazakhstan’s largest lender, began talks with creditors to renegotiate payments on as much as $15 billion of debt in a bid to avert bankruptcy, Chief Executive Officer Anvar Saidenov said. “The viability of the institution will depend on how successful we are in negotiating with our creditors,” Saidenov, who is also chairman of BTA’s management board, said today in an interview in London.

The European Commission proposed a draft law on Wednesday that would make it mandatory for hedge funds to register and disclose information on leverage to supervisors if they want to operate in the EU, a Commission official said. The draft law has been subject to intense horse-trading ahead of its publication as Britain, the European Union's hedge fund centre, fears overly draconian rules, while France is a keen backer of tighter regulation. The global hedge fund sector has assets totalling $1.4 trillion, relatively small compared to the wider financial market.