Headlines

A major piece of legislation aimed at tackling the State’s personal debt crisis is facing delays of at least two months, the Irish Times has learned. A draft version of the proposed personal insolvency legislation was published in January, with the Minister for Justice Alan Shatter describing it as the “most radical reform of insolvency law since the foundation of the State”. He said the Bill would be finalised and ready by the end of April and he expressed the hope it would become law in the autumn.

A chorus of European leaders on Wednesday called for strategies to bolster the region's faltering growth, in comments reflecting the growing unease about the austerity medicine being applied to heal the region's economic woes—but their similar rhetoric hid widely divergent policy prescriptions, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Britain slipped back into recession at the start of this year, with economists concluding that even the most generous interpretation of official data released on Wednesday suggested the economy had flatlined for over a year, the Financial Times reported. The Office for National Statistics said that output for the first three months of the year contracted by 0.2 per cent, following a 0.3 per cent decline at the end of 2011. “A second consecutive drop in GDP in the first quarter leaves the UK meeting the technical definition of recession,” said Allan Monks, economist at JPMorgan.

The Chinese government is pushing in two directions as it seeks to slow price growth while avoiding a collapse. It’s lowering borrowing costs for first-time homebuyers to encourage purchases while Premier Wen Jiabao keeps curbs in place to stem the speculators who have helped drive home prices up by as much as 140 percent since 1998, Bloomberg reported. China’s 18 percent first-quarter drop in home sales contributed to the slowest economic growth in almost three years.

When Maclaren USA entered bankruptcy in December, its Chapter 7 filing made for a lot more questions about what the company was doing in bankruptcy than it provided answers—questions that have remained largely unanswered since, The Wall Street Journal Bankruptcy Beat blog reported. Why did sales drop so drastically in 2011, to $34,251 from over $20 million in 2010? Does Maclaren, the U.K.-based company that manufactures the strollers and other products, plan to continue selling in the U.S.?

Former Bridgecorp director Rod Petricevic has been jailed for six and a half years, The New Zealand Herald reported. Petricevic was found guilty earlier this month on 18 charges for misleading investors and of knowingly making false statements that Bridgecorp had never missed a payment of interest or principal. Some of the charges Petricevic was convicted of under the Crimes Act carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail.

A YPF bond due in July next year is likely to default, and while Repsol YPF SA should escape a similar fate, this prospect could be yet another headache for the Spanish company after YPF's operations were seized by Argentina's government last week. Analysts expect that YPF's nationalization will almost certainly lead to a default on its bonds. Argentina's proposal to take over 51% of YPF would cut Repsol' stake to just 6% from 57% currently. Repsol, which denounced the takeover, has vowed to take the dispute to court.

Greece will have to cope with an even deeper recession than expected in 2012, according to the country’s central bank. In a revision to its previous estimate a month ago, it suggests Athens will find it even harder to meet its fiscal targets, meaning yet more pain for the population, the Financial Times reported. The Bank of Greece forecast the economy will shrink by about 5 per cent this year – the fifth consecutive year of contraction – compared with its previous estimate of 4.5 per cent just a few weeks ago.

Germany's central-bank chief rejected calls for the European Central Bank to back off from its push for fiscal austerity, batting down mounting concern that the strategy is causing deep economic pain and escalating political upheaval across Europe. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann also made no apologies for his repeated warnings that some ECB anticrisis policies, including government-bond buying and looser collateral rules, threaten financial stability and may generate inflation.

Elpida Memory Inc.’s bankruptcy is fueling concern the company could be a burden to an acquirer, with shares of SK Hynix Inc. and Micron Technology Inc. declining on takeover speculation, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. Investors aren’t keen on a full or partial takeover by Hynix or Micron because “they would need funds to buy Elpida’s assets, and even after an acquisition, they would need a lot of money to keep operations going,” said Yuichi Ishida, a Tokyo-based analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities Co.