Headlines

Indebted Kuwaiti financial firm Investment Dar is seeking court approval to help close a 813 million dinar ($2.7 billion) debt restructuring, according to an official document seen by Reuters. The new plan, called Dasman, is designed to overcome minority creditor dissent to earlier proposals by asking Kuwait's Court of Appeal to impose the deal on all creditors. The plan involves transferring Investment Dar's assets, and the management of their disposal, directly to creditors.

Alexis Tsipras moved swiftly to form a new Greek government on Monday after his convincing victory in the national election a day earlier, with some officials close to him suggesting that he would create a new ministry solely dedicated to carrying out the tough bailout package he reluctantly agreed to last summer, the International New York Times reported. While Sunday’s election consolidated his power and rid his leftist Syriza party of its most rebellious faction, Mr.

Ireland is to become one of the first countries to introduce measures aimed at ensuring multinationals disclose more information to tax authorities, the Irish Times reported. In the upcoming budget, the Government will introduce moves obliging multinationals to draft country-by-country reports on their global activities, according to sources. If enacted the new rules could affect our biggest corporations, such as CRH, Glanbia, Kerry and Ryanair, as well as major foreign multinationals that have located their global headquarters here over recent years for tax reasons.

The Federal Reserve’s inaction last week remains the main driver of market sentiment, at least for now — but attention will soon turn toward potential action at other central banks, the Financial Times reported. Not least in Sweden, where the Riksbank faces a further test of its monetary policy mettle. It has taken rates more deeply into negative territory than any other central bank in the developed world, reversing a series of rate increases made in 2010-2011. The about-face came as the effects of the wider, global financial crisis proved more stubborn than it expected.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has suspended the credit licence of PAID International Ltd until April next year because it is insolvent and stopped providing loans, ABC News reported. An external administrator was appointed in January this year and the company kept trading. Last year, the administrator agreed to repay nearly $1 million to 6,650 customers who paid excessive fees on more than 20,000 loans. The company, which used to be called First Stop Money, has so far refunded nearly $240,000 of that money to consumers under an agreement with ASIC.

Salaried employees and retirees of U.S. Steel Canada Inc. want the Ontario Superior Court to order the steel maker’s parent to halt any moves to shift steel production out of Canada until after a mediation session, The Globe and Mail reported. A plan by United States Steel Corp. to shift production of high value-added steel from Hamilton and Nanticoke, Ont., to U.S. mills has brought a year-long battle between the Pittsburgh-based giant and its stakeholders to a head.

Sahaviriya Steel Industries has reached an agreement with its creditors to enter debt-restructuring for the massive Bt50 billion it owes them and has pulled the plug on its upstream plant in Britain as part of its strategy to keep its core business in Thailand afloat, The Nation reported. "The huge loss of the UK base is crimping the cash flows of SSI in Thailand, so we had to keep the hot-rolled coil steel business in Thailand going by opening negotiations with lenders," Win Viriyaprapaikit, president of SSI, said yesterday.

South Korea plans to open a government-led corporate restructuring market to speed up the liquidation of "zombie" companies and resuscitate marginal firms suffering a "temporary" financial stress, Xinhua reported. "Corporate restructuring led only by creditor banks faced limitations. It needs to encourage various market players to join it, and market-centered restructuring is preferred," Lee Myung Soon, director general of Financial Services Commission's financial and corporate restructuring policy bureau, told foreign correspondents in Seoul Friday.

Baoding Tianwei Group Co. and three of its business units are filing for bankruptcy, five months after the maker of electrical transformers became the first state-owned Chinese company to default on an onshore bond, Bloomberg News reported. Tianwei and its units are insolvent and cannot pay their debts, the company said in a statement posted on Chinamoney.com.cn, a website of the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. Tianwei said it plans to meet its backers to discuss the bankruptcy.

Ukraine’s central bank declared a top 10 bank insolvent that is majority-owned by multimillionaire Kostyantyn Zhevago and where his London-listed Ferrexpo – the nation’s largest pellet exporter – has $174 million, or 62 percent, of its deposits, the Kyiv Post reported. At close of business on Sept. 17, the National Bank of Ukraine took the bank, the nation’s 10th largest by assets, into receivership after Zhevago failed to contribute liquidity, mainly by not repaying related-party loans to the bank by selling his non-core assets.