Headlines

OSX Brasil SA, the shipbuilding company of billionaire Eike Batista, on Monday denied a report it failed to make payments on debt held by Spanish infrastructure group Acciona, Reuters reported. The local Folha da S.Paulo newspaper reported on Sunday that Batista's OSX Brasil was struggling to avoid bankruptcy after it defaulted on some 500 million reais ($222 million) in debt held by Acciona. "The story on the supposed debt with supplier Acciona that OSX CN failed to honor is false," OSX said in a market filing with regulator CVM on Monday. Representatives of Acciona in Spain had no comment.

Dubai, which teetered on the brink of default in 2009, is accelerating asset sales as more than $30 billion of debt repayments come due next year, Bloomberg reported. Dubai Financial Group yesterday agreed to sell its stake in consumer lender Dubai First to First Gulf Bank PJSC for 601 million dirhams ($163 million). Dubai Holding LLC plans to sell its 35 percent stake in Tunisie Telecom, the country’s ministry for information and communication technologies, said June 21.

Global shipping company TMT Group sought bankruptcy protection after failing to restructure its $1.46 billion debt load out of court, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company, which has a fleet of 17 vessels that transport everything from oil to vehicles around the world, filed for Chapter 11 protection on Thursday in Houston, the latest victim of an industry downturn that has left shipping businesses struggling with their balance sheets. In the years leading up to the recession, TMT, like many of its peers, was building up its fleet, placing orders for new ships.

GM Canada faces billions of dollars worth of liabilities later this decade, most of which will come due as vehicle production declines in Oshawa, The Globe and Mail reported. Pension costs are scheduled to soar, interest-free loans from governments will hit their repayment date and payments on a note issued to finance health care costs start kicking in as production commitments the company made to the federal and Ontario governments in 2009 expire.

EU finance ministers failed to reach a deal on new rules for bailing out European banks after nearly 18 hours of negotiations early Saturday morning, forcing them to reconvene next week for a make-or-break session ahead of a summit that was supposed to set the course for a future EU “banking union”, the Financial Times reported.

Portugal is at the forefront of Europe’s latest baby bust, one that is shorting the fuse on a time bomb of social costs in some of the world’s most rapidly aging societies, The Washington Post reported. As in many corners of the industrialized world, Europe has faced a gradual decline in birthrates since the 1960s. But in a number of the region’s hardest-hit countries, a modest rebound during the 2000s — when European governments welcomed immigrants and rolled out cash benefits for young couples starting families — has now gone into reverse.

Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista is struggling to avoid bankruptcy of its shipyard and ship leasing company OSX Brasil after it defaulted on some 500 million reais ($222 million) in debt owed to Spanish infrastructure group Acciona, Folha de S.Paulo daily reported on Sunday. OSX Brazil, which recently fired 300 employees to cut costs, is now under pressure from banking creditors to pay off or renegotiate some 2 billion reais in short-term debt, the newspaper reported without revealing its source.

China’s financial system is in the throes of a cash squeeze as the government tries to restructure the economy and punish speculators, with interbank lending rates spiking on Thursday and bank-to-bank borrowing nearly stalled, the International Herald Tribune reported. China’s interbank and money market rates have soared over the last two weeks, and banks and other financial institutions are afraid of lending to one another. Without that lending, an economy can quickly stultify. Those in need of short-term cash, or liquidity, must pay dearly or risk default.

Euro finance ministers on Thursday agreed on broad guidelines on how to use the bloc's permanent bailout fund to rescue banks from failure, delivering on a long-promised goal to stabilize the bloc's financial system, the Associated Press reported. Enabling the 500 billion euro ($670 billion) rescue fund to shore up struggling banks directly is a pillar of the 17-nation eurozone's so-called banking union, which seeks to hand European institutions the job of supervision and rescue rather than leaving weaker member states to fend for themselves.

The International Monetary Fund is preparing to suspend aid payments to Greece by the end of next month unless eurozone leaders plug a €3bn-€4bn shortfall that has opened up in Greece’s €172bn rescue programme, according to officials involved in management of the bailout, the Financial Times reported. The gap emerged after eurozone central banks refused to roll over Greek bonds they hold, and comes amid signs that even the scaled-back privatisation plan Athens agreed to last year is falling behind schedule.