Headlines

Australia’s unemployment rate climbed to the highest in more than 10 years in January, spurring traders to pare bets on an interest-rate increase and sending the Aussie to its biggest drop in almost three weeks. The jobless rate rose to 6 percent from 5.8 percent, the statistics bureau said in Sydney. The median estimate was an increase to 5.9 percent in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. The number of people employed fell by 3,700. International carmakers Toyota Motor Corp., General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co.

A high-yield investment product backed by a loan to a debt-ridden coal company failed to repay investors when it matured last Friday, state media reported on Wednesday, in the latest sign of financial stress in China's shadow bank sector, Reuters reported. The product, which raised 289 million yuan ($47.7 million) from wealthy clients of China Construction Bank (CCB) , China's second-largest lender, was created by Jilin Province Trust Co Ltd and backed by a loan to a coal company, Shanxi Liansheng Energy Co Ltd. "It matured on Feb.

Creditors in Punch Taverns are weeks away from agreeing a major debt-for-equity restructuring designed to relieve the stricken pubs group from its £2.3bn debt overhang, The Telegraph reported. A major bondholder group - which speaks for investors including Standard Life, M&G and Aviva - said that a restructuring plan is “well advanced.” The comments came despite the 11th hour collapse of a rival restructuring plan put forward by Punch Taverns, the London-listed operating company which provides the beer to more than 4,000 leased pubs across the UK.

Leading Dutch bank ING reported on Wednesday a 22.3-percent slump in net profit for 2013, blamed special factors and said it would pursue its deep restructuring programme this year, The West Australian reported on an Agence France-Presse story. Amsterdam-based ING posted 3.2 billion euros ($4.3 billion) in net profit, down from 4.16 billion euros in 2012. Net profit for the fourth quarter of 2013 plunged by 63 percent to 539 million euros. However, this was much better than expected by analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires, who had put forward 351 million euros.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter has admitted that changes are needed to the new Personal Insolvency System while he also defended how it is operating, Independent.ie reported. He was speaking at a conference for Personal Insolvency Practitioners (Pips) on introducing new ways to make the debt deals work more smoothly. Mr Shatter said that some changes to the insolvency regime introduced last year were "inevitable", when he addressed the first conference of the new Insolvency Service of Ireland (ISI).

Iceland’s prime minister has criticised the UK and Dutch authorities for filing a IKr1,000bn (£5.6bn) lawsuit over the 2008 collapse of online lender Icesave, saying they should “forget” the affair as they were unlikely to win the case. Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, prime minister since May, told the Financial Times the Icesave lawsuit – in which the UK and Netherlands authorities are seeking a sum equivalent to nearly two-thirds of the island’s annual GDP – recalled his country’s previous legal battle against the two countries, which ended in court victory for Iceland last year.

At least a dozen large international investors are lining up to look at a large Spanish property-loan portfolio sale that will take the temperature of one of Europe's most distressed real-estate markets, The Wall Street Journal reported. Commerzbank AG recently began shopping around the portfolio—code named Project Octopus—that includes loans with a face value of €4.4 billion ($6 billion) that are backed by shopping centers, hotels and offices.

The European Union's antitrust chief, Joaquín Almunia, said Tuesday he was looking into unfair tax regimes by some European governments and whether these qualified as illegal state aid, The Wall Street Journal reported. His comments came amid a continuing row in Europe over how legal loopholes and low corporate tax in some countries allow large firms, such as Google Inc. and Apple Inc. to shrink their tax bill. Mr. Almunia said he had sent out a number of requests for information to those countries where there were "doubts" about the legal framework for taxation.

Insolvency firm Ferrier Hodgson has been appointed as voluntary administrator by the board of bankrupt contractor Forge Group, sources close to the situation told The Australian Financial Review's Street Talk. The next step is that lender ANZ Banking Group will take control by appointing KordaMentha as receiver. ANZ extended Forge an additional $11 million line of credit in the past fortnight, which was being used to pay Forge employees and for other working capital expenses.

Cyprus's economic restructuring programme is on target, with fiscal targets for 2013 performing better than expected, but the outlook remains challenging, international lenders said Tuesday. The assessment was made by the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund after their latest review of the programme, agreed with Cyprus last March in exchange for a 10 billion euro ($13.6 billion) bailout, Global Post reported on an Agence France-Presse story.