Headlines

ATU Auto-Teile-Unger, the German car repair and tire chain owned by KKR & Co., will be taken over by lenders following a debt restructuring, Bloomberg reported. Shareholders and a majority of senior bondholders agreed to write off more than 600 million euros ($816 million) of debt to cut cash interest costs by more than 90 percent, Weiden, Germany-based ATU said in a statement today. The company was downgraded to ‘selective default’ by Standard & Poor’s after the deal was announced.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has invited euro zone officials to a meeting in Berlin on Friday in a bid to come closer to a solution on a planned European resolution mechanism to deal with troubled banks, a German newspaper said on Friday. Business daily Handelsblatt cited unnamed EU diplomats and German government sources as saying Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem, French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, ECB Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen and European Union regulation chief Michel Barnier were all expected to attend.

British film and computer game rental chain Blockbuster said it is to close 62 stores and lay off 427 employees and warned its remaining 91 stores and 808 staff could face the same fate, Reuters reported. Private equity firm Gordon Brothers Europe, which purchased Blockbuster for an undisclosed sum in March, put it into administration on Nov. 11, when it was trading from 264 stores, employing 2,000. Administrator Moorfields Corporate Recovery said on Thursday it had not received any acceptable offers for the business.

EU antitrust regulators vowed to keep investigating rate-rigging on Wednesday as they slapped a record 1.7 billion euro (1.4 billion pounds) penalty on six financial institutions including Deutsche Bank, RBS and JPMorgan. The fines by the Commission, which along with authorities around the globe has been examining the manipulation of London interbank offered rate (Libor) and its euro equivalent Euribor, takes the tally of penalties related to the scandal to almost $6 billion (3 billion pounds).

The age of austerity may be nearing an end as governments ease the fiscal cuts that restrained economic recoveries, Bloomberg reported. After three years of slashing budgets bloated by recession and the stimulus deployed to fight it, U.S. and euro-area officials are finding less need to retrench as their previous efforts and improving economic growth help narrow deficits. This will allow them to tighten policy next year by the least since they began in 2011, according to estimates by the International Monetary Fund.

Millions of young workers will be unable to retire until they reach 70 under new government rules, The Telegraph reported. An overhaul of the state retirement system announced on Thursday will mean that people now under 50 will have to work even longer than they had previously thought. George Osborne, the Chancellor, will announce the new rules and argue that they are one of the “difficult decisions” required to put the public finances on a secure footing in the long term.

Bank of Ireland successfully raised €580 million of equity today as part of a deal to repay €1.8 billion of its State bailout, the Irish Times reported. Under its original €4.8 billion bailout back in 2009, Bank of Ireland had been entitled to purchase the 1.8 million preference shares back from the Government at €1 each before March 31st, 2014. After that date, the price would have risen to €1.25 a share, which would increase the total cost to the bank to €2.25 billion. Today’s issuance will redeem €537 million of the Government’s shares.

Actions towards parliamentary passage of an Insolvency Act are proceeding as planned as part of the growth-enhancing structural reforms being established to improve the business environment in Jamaica, according to the October 2013 report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The Gleaner reported. The Government has agreed that improvement to the insolvency framework is one of the pieces of legislation it expects to finalise before the end of the year.

Shares of India realty major Unitech today plunged by nearly 10 per cent amid reports that the company has received a default notice from LIC Housing Finance on a loan taken in 2007 for a luxury housing project in Noida, The Economic Times reported. Unitech's scrip tanked 9.54 per cent to close the day at Rs 15.65 on BSE. Intra-day, the scrip lost 14.45 per cent to Rs 14.80. On NSE, the stock slumped by 8.99 per cent to Rs 15.70 apiece. With share price plunging, Unitech market value shrunk by by Rs 435 crore to Rs 4,091 crore.

Changes to legislation reducing the State’s bankruptcy term from 12 years to three were announced today by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter, the Irish Times reported. Announcing the package of measures, the Minister said they “complete the reform of our personal insolvency and bankruptcy legislation”. Mr Shatter said the measures “will address the circumstances of insolvent debtors”. “Critically, there will now be automatic discharge from bankruptcy after three years from the date of adjudication – a significant reduction from the current 12 years,” he said.