Headlines

Regional NSW carrier Brindabella Airlines is in the hands of receivers KordaMentha after it failed to recover from the grounding of eight of its 10 aircraft because of overdue maintenance checks, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Commonwealth Bank had a fixed and floating charge over the Canberra airline's assets. Brindabella said on Saturday it had "temporarily" suspended operations even though the Civil Aviation Safety Authority was allowing two of its Jetstream aircraft to remain in service.

Ireland's three-year bailout ordeal ended this weekend, a victory in its battle against bankruptcy. But while the government is ready to finance itself without aid, the Irish can't yet escape what has become Europe's longest-running austerity program, the Associated Press reported. The Irish faced ruin in 2010, when the runaway cost of a bank-bailout program begun two years earlier destroyed the country's ability to borrow at affordable rates. To the rescue came fellow European nations and the International Monetary Fund with a three-year loan package worth 67.5 billion euros ($93 billion).

Ailing Spanish fishing firm Pescanova is considering a non-binding takeover offer from a consortium which includes U.S. private equity firm KKR and shareholder Damm, a domestic brewer, Reuters reported. Pescanova filed for insolvency earlier this year after its auditors said managers had attempted to hide debt. The drawn-out insolvency process could end in a liquidation or a plan to re-float the company.

SAG Solarstrom AG said that it would file for insolvency, becoming the latest casualty of a solar industry crisis that has claimed many of its peers over the last two years, Reuters reported today. The small German company, which builds and operates solar power plants, said today that talks with banks and creditors over refinancing the business had broken down. As a result it would make no interest payment on Dec. 16 for its 2010/2015 bond.

The euro-zone jobs market stabilized in the six months to September, according to employment figures released today, bringing an end to a long decline in the number of people at work in the 17 countries that use the euro, the Wall Street Journal reported today. With economic growth expected to remain weak, it will take some time before employment levels rise significantly in the currency area. But signs that the jobs market has at least stabilized are a positive development for the euro zone's recovery prospects.

Ailing Spanish fishing firm Pescanova is considering a non-binding takeover offer from a consortium which includes U.S. private equity firm KKR and shareholder Damm, a domestic brewer, Reuters reported today. Pescanova filed for insolvency earlier this year after its auditors said managers had attempted to hide debt. The drawn-out insolvency process could end in a liquidation or a plan to re-float the company.

China Citic Bank Corp. plans to ask shareholders for permission to write off close to $900 million of nonperforming loans, an unusual move as China's bad-debt levels start to tick upward, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The bank, China's seventh-largest by assets, said in statements on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this week that it wants to more than double the amount of loans it can write off in 2013 to 5.2 billion yuan ($852 million), up from a previously planned 2 billion-yuan write-off.

Investors interested in buying Romanian state-owned, indebted chemical plant Oltchim have until Jan. 31 to file binding offers, a consortium of court-appointed managers for the firm said yesterday, Reuters reported. Oltchim was forced to file for insolvency at the start of this year. Court-appointed managers then restructured the firm and now aim to pick a winning bid for the remaining viable parts of Oltchim on Feb. 3, they said in a statement.

An Icelandic court sentenced four former Kaupthing bankers to jail yesterday for market abuses related to a large stake taken in the bank by a Qatari sheikh just before it went under in late 2008, Reuters reported yesterday. Weeks before the country's top three banks collapsed under huge debts as the global credit crunch struck, Kaupthing announced that Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Bin Hamad al Thani had bought 5 percent of its shares in a confidence-boosting move. A parliamentary commission later said that the shares had been bought with a loan from Kaupthing itself.

Kazakhstan's Alliance Bank, controlled by the oil-rich nation's sovereign wealth fund, will discuss the restructuring of its debt at a creditor meeting in London this week, a source at the bank said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Alliance, the ninth-largest lender by assets among the Central Asian nation's 38 banks, defaulted on its debt in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Its dollar bonds fell to record lows earlier this year on fears that it was heading towards a second debt restructuring.