Headlines

Aquascutum, the venerable British fashion brand that has been worn by Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, has been placed into administration, The Washington Post reported on an Associated Press story. Administrator Geoff Rowley of FRP Advisory said Tuesday he hopes to find a buyer. The decision to put the brand into administration follows a change of ownership at Jaeger, another longtime British brand that had been united with Aquascutum under the ownership of entrepreneur Harold Tillman.

Italian prosecutors have widened a probe into the family group that controls troubled insurer Fondiaria-SAI, sources said on Tuesday, in a move that could complicate plans to rescue Fondiaria through a merger with peer Unipol, Reuters reported. Milan prosecutor Luigi Orsi launched a probe last year into alleged market irregularities carried out by Salvatore Ligresti, the patriarch of the family controlling Fondiaria.

Fierce debate is growing in Europe over whether austerity or growth offers the best strategy to overcome the continent's sovereign debt crisis. As if it were that simple. As the euro zone hovers on the brink of its second recession in three years, the battle launched in academic journals, blogs and the financial press has spread to the hustings in France, Greece and soon in EU economic powerhouse Germany too, Reuters reported in an analysis.

Spanish debt risk climbed to a record for a second day and signalled a 37 percent chance the nation will default as its borrowing costs surged to levels that prompted its neighbors to seek bailouts, Bloomberg reported. Spain is due to sell new debt Tuesday before European officials travel to Washington later this week to seek a bigger war chest to battle the financial crisis. The nation’s 10-year bond yield soared to 6.15 percent, the highest since Dec. 1 and approaching the 7 percent level that foresaw the international rescues of Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

European banks are bracing for a wave of ratings downgrades in coming weeks that could intensify pressure on the fragile industry and further undercut recent efforts to defuse the Continent's long-running financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported. Under pressure from banks, Moody's Investors Service said Friday that it is delaying until early May its highly anticipated decision on whether to downgrade the credit ratings of 114 banks in 16 European countries.

President Cristina Kirchner, in a move that marks a watershed in expanding the state's grip on the economy, said she will send a bill to Congress to nationalize Argentina's largest oil-and-gas company, YPF SA, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move fired up a battle with the company's Spanish controlling shareholder and the Madrid government. Under the proposal, which declares the petroleum industry of "national public interest," Argentina's federal and provincial governments would take 51% of the company, now majority owned by Repsol YPF SA of Spain.

The European Central Bank's double dose of cheap three-year funding has been a success, ECB Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said on Monday, declining to comment on whether the ECB should resume buying bonds of troubled euro zone member states, Reuters reported. He said he saw no immediate need for another offering of long-term funding for banks.

A few years ago, the densely built-up coastal region around this port was called Panel Bay because of its concentration of factories making the sophisticated flat-panel screens that were symbols of Japan’s manufacturing prowess. But now the area has become a grim symbol of its industrial decline, the International Herald Tribune reported.

Negotiators headed off a strike of 29,000 Norwegian industrial workers on Sunday with a "moderate" wage-and-benefits hike that could set the tone for other labor talks this spring across the oil-rich economy, Reuters reported. Strikers had threatened to picket about 800 companies, including units of oil company supplier Aker Solutions, aluminium producer Hydro, defense contractor Kongsberg Defense and clothing maker Helly Hansen.

Unemployment may still have further to rise this year as a result of slow economic growth, though fears of the total topping 3m are fading, according to analysts, the Financial Times reported. Economists expect this week’s data to show the jobless rate stable at 8.4 per cent of the workforce, or about 2.7m, in the three months to February, according to a Reuters poll. If that forecast is borne out, it would be the third month in which unemployment has been flat.