Headlines

British footwear retailer Barratts Shoes and film and computer game rental chain Blockbuster both went into administration on Monday, a form of bankruptcy protection, blaming tough trading conditions and threatening over 3,000 jobs. Many British retailers are still finding the going tough despite signs of economic recovery as inflation continues to outpace wage rises and competition from the Internet intensifies.

Switzerland's biggest publicly backed lender is being saddled with more stringent rules, in the latest move by regulators in the Alpine nation to corral risk in the financial sector, The Wall Street Journal reported. On Monday, Zurich-based Zuercher Kantonalbank said the Swiss National Bank, the central bank, is requiring the bank to follow too-big-to-fail rules similar to those that already apply to international giants UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group AG.

Former Labor leaders Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have landed the party in dangerous new financial territory, with individual members warned ahead of this year's election that they would be held personally responsible if the party traded while insolvent, Business Spectator reported on an Australian Financial Review story. The newspaper said the warning was handed down in June by the party’s long-time legal advisor, Tony Lang, after Mr Rudd’s no-holes-barred 2007 campaign saw the party sell most of its assets.

Euro-area growth data this week may show the region’s nascent recovery slowing to a crawl, supporting Mario Draghi’s case for an interest-rate cut to help the economy get back to its feet. Gross domestic product in the region rose just 0.1 percent in the third quarter, according to the median forecast of 41 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. In the 3 1/2 hours before that report on Nov. 14, economists predict a series of data releases to show growth slowing in Germany and stalling in France, with Italy remaining mired in an unprecedented slump.

The Central Bank believes it is powerless to sanction the directors and managers of Newbridge Credit Union (NCU) for a litany of alleged rules breaches that were outlined by the regulator in court documents last week, the Irish Times reported. NCU got a €54 million taxpayer bailout over the weekend to facilitate a High Court-sanctioned takeover of the credit union by Permanent TSB. The regulator only gained the power to sanction credit union directors for regulatory breaches from August 1st this year, under the Credit Union and Co-operation with Overseas Regulators Act.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said the Government will decide before the end of the bailout in mid-December whether it will seek a special credit line to guard against renewed turmoil after the rescue programme, the Irish Times reported. Mr Noonan was speaking alongside Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin this morning as the EU-IMF said Ireland had successfully executed all obligations on it under the three-year bailout, a key step in the process of leaving the programme next month.

The European Central Bank cut interest rates to a record low on Thursday and said it could take them lower still to prevent the euro zone's recovery from stalling as inflation tumbles. The move took financial markets by surprise - the euro fell sharply in response while European shares rose. Underlining its support for the euro zone, the ECB said it would prime banks with as much liquidity as required until mid-2015. A Reuters poll of economists also saw the ECB offering banks a new round of cheap money within six months.

Cyprus's economy will shrink by 7.7% this year, less than the 8.7% originally forecast, experts from the country's international creditors said in a statement Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported. Officials from Cyprus's so-called troika of lenders—the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank—who have just completed a fact-finding mission in Nicosia, said the economic situation remains difficult.

Russia's mining giant Norilsk Nickel has no plans to help bail out financially-troubled Finnish nickel miner Talvivaara, a source familiar with the Russian company's plans said, Reuters reported. Talvivaara said earlier on Thursday it was in talks with stakeholders to secure funds after a series of production disruptions at its Sotkamo mine and a fall in nickel prices put it at risk of bankruptcy. Norilsk Nickel, the world's biggest nickel and palladium producer, is Talvivaara's main customer and owns a 0.64 percent stake in the company.

The share of Japanese households with no financial assets rose to a record as falling incomes forced people to dig into their savings, highlighting the potential for widening disparities under Abenomics, Bloomberg reported. The proportion reached 31 percent, according to a Bank of Japan survey released in Tokyo yesterday, up from 26 percent a year earlier and the highest since the poll began in 1963. The BOJ surveyed 8,000 households of two or more people aged 20 years or older from June 14 though July 23.