Headlines

A Swedish court on Thursday rejected an application from China's National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), which bought bankrupt car maker Saab in 2012, for protection against creditors while it concludes funding talks, Reuters reported. The court called the solutions NEVS had outlined to secure funding "vague and completely undocumented," casting further doubt over the long-term future of the company, which has not built any cars in recent months due to a shortage of money.

Mexico is attracting record levels of foreign investment, boasts a stable economy, and is becoming an export powerhouse in areas like cars and aerospace. But when it comes to one economic measure—its minimum wage—the country lags behind only Haiti in the hemisphere, The Wall Street Journal reported. Pressure is rising on the federal government to change that.

This week’s theatrical resignation threat by Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, combined with the deep anxiety about deflation revealed at Jackson Hole, Wyo., by Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, suggest that the euro crisis may be coming back. But a crisis is often an opportunity, and this is the hope now beginning to excite markets in the eurozone, the International New York Times reported.

Finland's budget deficit will be so large in 2015 that it will violate the European Union's budget-balance rules designed to fix the euro zone's rickety public finances, the highest-ranking civil servant at Finland's Ministry of Finance said Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported. A breach of these binding rules would mark a humiliation for Finland which only a few years ago was classified as a fiscally responsible euro area member and thus a natural ally of Germany, Europe's economic and political powerhouse.

A group representing more than 400 of the world’s largest banks, investors and debt issuers has agreed a plan for dealing with financially stricken countries and their creditors, in a bid to prevent a repeat of the wrangling that has pushed Argentina into default, the Financial Times reported. After months of talks convened by the US Treasury in the wake of Greece’s restructuring, global debt experts will on Friday unveil a new framework that could transform the relationship between critically indebted nations and lenders.

Almost 1,000 complaints were made against insolvency practitioners in the last 12 months, representing an increase of 25% on the previous year, according to figures from the Insolvency Service, Accountancy Age reported. The Insolvency Service revealed a steep rise in complaints about practitioners since it launched its Insolvency Practitioners' Complaints Gateway in June 2013 as a single point of entry for complaints about insolvency practitioners.

Qantas Airways Ltd reported its biggest ever financial loss on Thursday after writing a hefty A$2.6 billion (1.45 billion pounds) off the value of its fleet due to a company restructure, Reuters reported. Australia's national flag carrier attempted to reassure investors after a turbulent few years, saying the worst was now behind it and that it expected a return to underlying profit growth in the first half of the current financial year.

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government faces a second national strike in less than five months, as a default last month threatens to aggravate quickening inflation and a plunging peso, Bloomberg News reported. Some state employees picketed at the main entrances to Buenos Aires from midday today and marched down 9 de Julio avenue in the city center. Truckers, train drivers, port workers and waiters are set to join them from midnight in a 24-hour strike in demand of higher wages and in protest at dismissals.

IBRC’s special liquidators are gearing up to sell off loans owed by past and current staff of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide with a face value of €30 million, the Irish Times reported. The sale is expected to attract interest from private equity buyers prepared to take on a mixture of loans, ranging from home mortgages taken out by Irish Nationwide staff to loans taken out by former Anglo bankers to exercise share options.

Sean Dunne’s two biggest creditors and the US court official investigating his financial affairs have objected to the insolvent property developer’s application to withdraw his US bankruptcy case, the Irish Times reported. At a hearing in a Connecticut court, a lawyer for Mr Dunne’s bankruptcy trustee Richard Coan said he would be seeking to block the developer’s request to end his bid to walk away from $942 million (€700 million) in debts through a discharge from bankruptcy in the US.