Headlines

Property developer Sean Dunne has thrown in the towel on his attempt to walk away from about €700 million in debts through the US bankruptcy courts, the Irish Times reported. In a major victory for the National Asset Management Agency, his biggest creditor, Mr Dunne has abandoned his bid to seek a fresh financial start.

Three units of PT Bumi Resources, Asia’s most-indebted coal miner, filed for creditor protection in the U.S. after failing to make a semi-annual interest payment, Bloomberg News reported. Bumi Investment Pte Ltd listed assets and debt of as much as $1 billion each in Chapter 15 papers filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Bumi Capital Pte and Enercoal Resources Pte also sought court protection. Companies use Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code to fend off creditor claims in the U.S. while they reorganize their finances elsewhere.

A dispute over whether bankrupt developer Seán Dunne validly transferred various property assets to his wife Gayle, including a hotel in South Africa, is to be fast-tracked by the Commercial Court, the Irish Times reported. Mr Dunne has debts of up to €700 million and Chris Lehane, the official administering his bankruptcy, has brought proceedings against Gayle Dunne seeking to set aside purported agreements under which Mr Dunne allegedly transferred his interest in a number of properties in Ireland and South Africa to his wife.

Standard and Poor's said it would not expect a big increase in sovereign defaults if the International Monetary Fund adopted a plan to force states to restructure their debts before receiving IMF aid, Reuters reported. The international lender proposed the change in June, in part as a result of its experience in Greece, where it agreed to bail out the euro zone country without imposing losses on private creditors, before having to do a U-turn.

Strikes by thousands of teachers frustrated by low salaries and mandatory payments to pension plans have spread across cities in northeast China, state news media reported on Monday, the International New York Times reported. The strikes began last week and now encompass a half-dozen cities or counties surrounding the city of Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province, an area of the country where economic growth has long been relatively slow. Classes in some primary and high schools have been suspended, the reports said.

German airline Lufthansa says it has cancelled about half of its flights after pilots went on strike in an ongoing dispute over retirement benefits, the International New York Times reported. The airline, Germany's largest, said Monday that 1,350 of its 2,800 flights scheduled through the strike's end Tuesday at midnight have been cancelled, affecting 150,000 passengers. The strike was primarily focused on Lufthansa's inner-Europe flights on Monday but was to be extended to long-haul flights Tuesday.

Thousands of French company chiefs took the streets on Monday in a rare protest against what they see as excessive taxes and red tape strangling activity in the euro zone’s second largest economy, the Irish Times reported. The protests in Paris and the southwestern city of Toulouse are the first in a week of demonstrations organised by employer groups before the December 10th unveiling of a law President Francois Hollande’s government hopes will boost investment and jobs.

Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Japan’s credit rating today, highlighting the challenges facing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as he tries to stoke inflation and growth, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In explaining its move, Moody’s cited heightened uncertainty over Japan’s ability to cut its fiscal deficit after Abe decided last month to delay an increase in the national sales tax scheduled to take effect next year.

Germany, France and Italy urged European Union regulators to speed up and widen curbs on tax-lowering deals for companies, saying that the EU should adopt rules by the end of next year, Bloomberg News reported today. Measures should go beyond greater transparency and company registries to a “general principle of effective taxation” to stem the EU’s lack of “tax harmonization” that entices companies to cherry-pick where they pay, according to a joint letter by finance ministers Wolfgang Schaeuble, Michel Sapin and Pier Carlo Padoan to the EU Commission.

As investigators sift through the wreckage of Banco Espírito Santo SA, their focus is expanding beyond the alleged fraud and accounting problems that doomed the large Portuguese lender, the Wall Street Journal reported today. They also are looking into whether the bank was involved in money-laundering activities in multiple countries, according to people familiar with the investigations.