Headlines

Ukraine's KVV Group has offered to buy Latvia's insolvent steelmaker Liepajas Metalurgs for 107 million euros ($138 million), the insolvency administrator said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Liepajas Metalurgs, the only producer of rolled steel in the Baltic countries, filed for bankruptcy last year, blaming weak demand in Europe. The KVV Group has provided a clear plan for re-launching the plant's operations, the insolvency administrator Haralds Velmers said in a statement. KVV Group is going to pay the sum over 10 years.

Parliament here began debating Germany's first balanced federal budget since 1969 on Tuesday, seven years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent Europe's largest economy into a tailspin, dashing the government's previous attempt at balancing its books, The Wall Street Journal reported. Yet concern is rising in Berlin that a budget partly meant as an example for more profligate members of the euro-zone could, once more, face last-minute derailment amid mounting geopolitical risks and mixed economic signals in Europe's powerhouse.

The European Central Bank is turning into a European “bad bank” by loading up on bundled-up loans, and its record-low interest rates will not do anything to promote lending in the euro zone, former ECB chief economist Juergen Stark said, the Irish Times reported. Stark, a former ECB executive board member and an arch-hawk, quit the bank in 2011 to protest its policies. Now he says the September rates cut would be “ridiculous, if the matter was not so serious”.

Major private shipbuilder China Ronsgsheng Heavy Industries Group looks like its fate is being forced upon it with upcoming government intervention, SeatradeGlobal reported. The group had suspended its shares last month and flagged that a potential announcement relating to restructuring was imminent.Over the weekend, made a further announcement that it had been "notified by a government authority that they are procuring an independent third party to consider and, if appropriate, to initiate a potential restructuring involving Jiangsu Rongsheng Heavy Industries".

If investors felt the first flutters of nerves last week over Scotland’s independence referendum, they are now on high alert, the Financial Times reported. The publication of the first poll to put the pro-independence campaign in the lead prompted a sharp fall in the pound on Monday and a sell-off in the shares of companies with Scottish exposure. It also led to a marked shift in investors’ expectations for the timing of the first rise in UK interest rates.

A mortgage expert has said the Insolvency Service of Ireland has "failed" and called for an overhaul of how insolvency is managed, the Irish Examiner reported. ISI was set up in March 2013 under the Personal Insolvency Act to provide debt relief mechanisms to those facing insolvency, or the inability to service their existing debts. One of the key debt relief mechanisms was personal insolvency arrangements, as they dealt with secured debt such as mortgages.

On Tuesday September 9 the United Nations General Assembly will meet to debate a new legal framework to serve as a guide for nations restructuring their debt, as is the current case with Argentina, teleSur reported. More than 130 developing countries have unanimously submitted a proposal to the United Nations calling for new legal rules to stop predatory financial speculators like vulture funds from undermining debt restructurings. If the motion is successful it could provide more efficient ways of dealing with government debt crisis.

Plunging iron ore prices have dealt their first blow in Australia, sending fledgling miner Western Desert Resources Ltd into administration after it failed to reach a deal with bankers over its debt, Reuters reported. Western Desert was caught out by a move by the world's top four iron ore producers to flood the market with low-cost supply, outpacing Chinese demand growth for the steel-making ingredient and slashing iron ore prices by 38 percent this year.

The Irish government has begun an intensive diplomatic push to persuade the European Commission and the European Central Bank to allow it to make an early repayment of a portion of its €67bn bailout debt to the International Monetary Fund, the Financial Times reported. Dublin believes that it could save at least €375m a year in interest payments on €22bn of IMF debt by refinancing three quarters of the amount in the capital markets to take advantage of ultra-low eurozone interest rates.

There's no money in the pot for unsecured creditors of Postie Plus, its administrator says, NZCity reported. The nationwide clothing retailer had 650 employees and 81 stores when it it went into voluntary administration in June, and 580 kept their jobs when assets were sold to South African based Pepkor in July. A report by PwC in August is bleak reading for unsecured creditors who will meet on Monday. The administrator has $1.6 million left and $6.2m is still owned to secured creditor BNZ. BNZ was originally owed $13.7m. There is no money for unsecured creditors.