Headlines

A savings bank undergoing a normalization plan was found to have extended loans to applicants using borrowed names, the financial watchdog said Monday, The Korea Times reported. As the grace period for six secondary lenders that survived the government’s mass suspension in September last year and have pushed for normalization ended last month, the financial authorities are expected to shortly come up with a clearing list. There are growing concerns that the fallout of last year’s savings bank scandal that hit domestic financial markets hard is likely to continue in the new year.

Companies collapsed at a rate of more than 160 a month in the first 11 months of last year, with the rate of failure increasing 20 per cent on 2010, according to a business information provider, the Irish Times reported. From January to November, some 1,930 Irish companies failed, with almost three-quarters of the companies liquidated and most of the rest going into receivership. The failed companies owe a total of almost €1.2 billion in unpaid debt to unsecured creditors, Vision-net said. Businesses in the hotel and restaurant sector were the hardest hit.

Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., India’s biggest sport-utility vehicle manufacturer, is interested in buying at least parts of bankrupt Swedish carmaker Saab Automobile, two people familiar with the situation said, Bloomberg reported. Mahindra, based in Mumbai, is in the process of trying to set up meetings with the two court-appointed administrators who are overseeing Saab’s bankruptcy to possibly buy parts of the carmaker or the whole company, said the people, who declined to be identified because the plans are private.

As lending has expanded in Brazil, so too have new opportunities for debt collection, which for the first time is starting to become big business in Brazil, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Brazil's banks have been on a lending boom in recent years, as relatively steady economic growth has led to record low unemployment and rising salaries. The volume of credit in Brazil has almost doubled, and now accounts for nearly 50 percent of gross domestic product. Total loans reached 2 trillion Brazilian reais ($1.1 trillion) in November, according to the central bank.

Prime Minister Mario Monti yesterday presented in broad terms his government's master plan for Italy, which he called "Grow Italy," the New York Times reported today. Devised to spur growth in a country that has seen little of it in the past 15 years, the proposals would include liberalizing Italy's closed professions and guilds, encouraging competitiveness and modernizing the nation's outdated infrastructure. The government will also tackle labor reform, a thorny issue for labor unions as well as for some political parties that support Monti's government.

India failed to adopt its long-awaited anticorruption legislation, a major embarrassment to the government that had promised to address an issue that has scared away foreign investors and brought waves of protesters into the streets, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had pledged to pass a bill to create a federal corruption watchdog by the end of 2011 after public protests this summer over pervasive graft destabilized the government.

D2 Jeans, a small British clothing retailer, has entered into administration, highlighting the plight of many of the country's fashion companies as they battle against a stagnant economy, Reuters reported yesterday. Business restructuring company BDO LLP said yesterday that its partners James Stephen and David Hill had been appointed as the administrators for D2 Jeans and added that 200 jobs would be eliminated.

Japan's ruling party compromised on a plan to double the sales tax by 2015 to help reduce the world’s largest public debt, delaying implementation by six months to help lawmakers meet a campaign pledge, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The proposal by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda would raise the sales tax from 5 percent to 8 percent in April 2014 and to 10 percent in October 2015. The agreement, reached late yesterday, must be approved by a government panel led by Finance Minister Jun Azumi before discussion with the opposition.

Thailand's government will today press the central bank chief to take on $35 billion of legacy debt from bank bailouts as Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra looks for fiscal scope to finance flood defenses, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Bank of Thailand Governor Prasarn Trairatvorakul meets with cabinet members in Bangkok over the proposal to shift the debt to the BOT's balance sheet.

The Japanese government told the operator of the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant yesterday to consider accepting temporary state control in return for a much-needed injection of public funds, in effect proposing an interim nationalization of the struggling utility, the New York Times reported yesterday. The order came after Tokyo Electric Power requested ¥689.4 billion ($8.8 billion) in government aid to help pay for its response to the nuclear accident at its Fukushima site.