Headlines

UAE residents are hopeful that new bankruptcy legislation will ease the burden on small business owners. After years of deliberations, in December the federal government introduced an insolvency law to ease the orderly unwinding of bankrupt companies, including protections for debtors. The law — still untested because of its newness — stays proceedings on bounced cheques if the debtor is in a court-approved insolvency process, the Financial Times reported.

Shares in Takata sank on Wednesday amid reports the troubled airbag maker might let its customers decide on how to restructure the company as it attempts to survive a crisis over its exploding airbags, the Financial Times reported. The Japanese company may have little choice other than to let carmakers decide on its fate, which could involve filing for bankruptcy through court as part of its restructuring process, Bloomberg said citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter.

South Korea’s financial authorities are considering a new bailout package for troubled shipyard Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. that includes haircuts for bondholders and fresh loans, people directly involved in the matter said, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Financial Services Commission, Korea’s main financial regulator, wants the yard’s creditors to write down 20% to 30% of its debt in addition to banks lending it another 3 trillion won ($2.68 billion), according to the people involved.

A quarter of a century ago, Italy was in a sea of troubles that invites a comparison with today’s storms, the Financial Times reported. The party political system was disintegrating. A gigantic corruption scandal pervaded the highest levels of public life. Rapidly increasing government debt was crushing the economy. Citizens despaired of the state’s ability to uphold law and order.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the eurozone’s finance ministers, has come under attack after refusing to apologise for saying southern European countries had wasted money on “drinks and women” in the run upto the continent’s debt crisis, the Financial Times reported. At a parliamentary hearing in Brussels on Tuesday, the Dutch policy chief – whose Labour party suffered a punishing defeat in national elections last week – was dubbed “insulting” and “vulgar” by MEPs for remarks made in an interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Banks in London that relocate operations to the euro zone after Brexit are likely to be spared a lengthy entry test by regulators, making it easier for them to shift, according to two officials with knowledge of the matter, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The European Central Bank, the euro zone's banking supervisor, has had many inquiries from British-based banks wanting to come under its watch, prompting it to look at fast-tracking licence applications, according to the sources.

Greece will not last in the eurozone in the long run and officials working on a review of its bailout package should prepare for such a possibility, a senior member of the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives said. Greece has lost a quarter of its national output since it first sought financial aid in 2010, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Its current bailout package is the third in seven years.

A Canadian court has placed the privately held Lexin Resources Ltd oil company in receivership to sell off its assets after an unprecedented application by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), the agency said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The AER's statement came weeks after the agency suspended licenses on all of the company's facilities. The AER has said Lexin had failed to comply with multiple orders, lacked enough staff to manage its more than 1,600 sites and owed more than C$70 million ($52.43 million). Lexin could not be reached for comment.

The founder and a former executive of China Medical Technologies Inc. were charged in the U.S. with stealing more than $400 million from investors in the bankrupt maker of medical diagnostic tests as part of a seven-year scheme, Bloomberg News reported.

Default fears are resurfacing in Singapore ahead of a wall of maturing corporate debt, as a U.S. bankruptcy filing by a firm from the city flags lingering pain despite economic recovery, Bloomberg News reported. Pressure to pay down obligations has been unrelenting. Companies excluding banks must repay S$38 billion ($27 billion) of local bonds over the next four years.