Headlines

Japan's Elpida Memory Inc asked U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware on Wednesday to enforce its reorganization plan sale to Micron Technologies Inc, a final step to creating the world's second-largest maker of memory chips, Thomson Reuters News & Insight reported. Boise, Idaho-based Micron has been losing money as the market for personal computers steadily loses ground to smartphones and tablets. Acquiring Elpida will allow Micron to create greater economies of scale and will rank the company behind Samsung Electronics in the memory chip market.

The International Monetary Fund urged the U.K. government to counter the effects of its austerity program by raising spending on infrastructure projects to avoid long-term damage to the nation's growth prospects, The Wall Street Journal reported. Launched in 2010, the austerity program is the government's cornerstone policy, and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has indicated he won't change course. The IMF had been a backer of the plan, allowing Mr. Osborne to use the fund's approval to validate his measures to improve the country's public finances.

Creditors of struggling Mexican homebuilder Homex could seek accelerated payment of the company's debt after Homex missed payments on derivative positions, according to a filing on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Failure to meet payments due on derivatives "arguably" constitutes an event of default on debt owed by Mexico's second-largest homebuilder, the company said in its delayed annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company at the end of December had a total of $900 million in three bonds due in 2015, 2019 and 2020, according to its fourth-quarter report.

Germany has agreed to give jobs or apprenticeships to about 5,000 young unemployed Spaniards every year, under a deal signed by labour ministers from both countries in Madrid on Tuesday, the Financial Times reported. The deal reflects rising concern in Berlin and other European capitals about a looming social crisis in countries such as Spain, where the rate of youth unemployment now stands at 57 per cent. But it also highlights Germany’s growing need for qualified workers, which is fuelled both by demographic changes and by the recent strong performance of the German economy.

Italy is considering allowing older workers to reduce their work hours while mentoring younger employees as a way to bring down youth unemployment, which is a growing scourge across Europe, The Wall Street Journal reported. Labor Minister Enrico Giovannini said that he planned this week to discuss the idea of "generational handoff" contracts with union leaders, who so far have been strongly supportive.

Swedish prosecutors have questioned the former head of bankrupt car maker Saab and two others in an investigation into suspected tax offences relating to the running of the company, officials said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Prosecutors are looking into allegations that executives at Saab, which collapsed in 2011, obstructed proper tax checks over the years 2010 to 2011, a turbulent time for the company, when it was sold by General Motors to small Dutch sports car maker Spyker, and when problems which led to its collapse emerged.

Since the financial crisis hit Europe in 2008, few issues have proved as divisive as deciding how to protect bank deposits, The Wall Street Journal Brussels Beat blog reported. A proposed European Union law that would force states to build deposit-guarantee funds has been stuck in the bloc's decision-making process for almost three years. And in the countries where they exist, the funds remain far too small to cover the €100,000 ($129,000) per bank account they are supposed to insure. Until this year, the deposit-guarantee funds of European countries weren't seriously tested.

A surge in requests for bankruptcy protection among Brazilian small- and mid-sized corporate borrowers is setting off an alarm among private-sector banks, which could raise borrowing costs and restrict access to credit to fend off the practice, analysts at BTG Pactual Group said on Tuesday, Thomson Reuters News & Insight reported.

Europe faces a decade of stagnation without “sustained and significant reforms,” Mark Carney, the incoming governor of the Bank of England, warned Tuesday. Mr. Carney, currently Canada’s top central banker, said Europe can draw lessons from Japan on the dangers of taking half measures, The Wall Street Journal Real Time Economics reported. It’s been almost six years since the global financial crisis, but Europe remains mired in recession, fiscal austerity, low confidence and tight credit conditions restraining economic activity, he said.

The International Monetary Fund is recommending short-term stimulus for much of Central Europe, where economies are going through their roughest patch in years and the recession in the euro zone has dampened hopes for a quick recovery, The Wall Street Journal reported. In the region, Czech Republic's economy is shrinking at ever-faster rates and Hungary is teetering on the brink of another recession. Poland, the largest of the three, is nearly stagnant after years of robust growth.