Headlines

Greece’s Parliament narrowly passed a crucial austerity bill early Thursday, in a vote that left the coalition government reeling from dissent as it struggles to secure vital bailout funds, The Washington Post reported. The bill, which will further slash pensions and salaries, passed 153-128 in the 300-member Parliament. It came hours after rioters rampaged outside Parliament during an 80,000-strong anti-austerity demonstration, clashing with riot police who responded with tear gas, stun grenades and water cannon.

U.K. bank executives want investors to buy into their vision of the future. But the past keeps catching up with them, The Wall Street Journal reported. During recent results presentations, CEOs of British banks boasted how they had cleaned up their balance sheets, refocused their franchises and cut underperforming business lines. However, most of the headlines were buried in the back of their regulatory filings.

One of South Africa's two satellite networks last week filed for "business rescue," a new legal mechanism designed to save and rehabilitate distressed companies rather than liquidate them, The Deal Pipeline reported. That goal may be worthwhile. But the limitations of the concept were manifest over the weekend when domestic carrier 1time Airline abandoned a similar attempted business rescue and said it will file for provisional liquidation. Both cases cast popular light on South Africa's attempts at a Chapter 11-like approach to insolvency.

International lenders will resume bailout talks with Cyprus on Friday, authorities said, in an attempt to secure badly needed financial aid by the end of the year for an island exposed to Greece's debt meltdown, the Irish Times reported. A team representing the lenders, known as the troika, would arrive tomorrow and talks would resume on Friday, Cypriot government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou said in a statement. He said the aim was to "secure an agreement on the programme for a loan" to Cyprus.

New Zealand’s unemployment rate unexpectedly rose last quarter to a 13-year high, adding to evidence of a faltering recovery and sending the best-performing Group of 10 currency this year plunging, Bloomberg reported. The jobless rate jumped to 7.3 percent from 6.8 percent in the second quarter, Statistics New Zealand said in a report today in Wellington. That’s the highest since the first quarter of 1999 and was more than the 6.7 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Employment fell by 0.4 percent, or 8,000 jobs, from the second quarter, when it dropped 0.1 percent.

Bahrain-based Arcapita Bank gained court approval on Wednesday for a $125 million bankruptcy loan from Fortress Investment Group, believed to be the first such loan consistent with sharia, Islamic law, Reuters reported. The loan, approved by Judge Sean Lane in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, New York, will fund Arcapita as it tries to restructure debt after filing for bankruptcy in March. Wednesday's hearing was delayed two hours as Arcapita, its creditors and Fortress negotiated over the price of the deal, Dennis Dunne, a lawyer for Arcapita's creditors' committee, told the judge.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy signalled Tuesday that he is in no hurry to ask for a financial rescue, saying he wants to be certain that activating the euro zone's new bailout mechanism would bring a significant improvement in Spain's borrowing costs, The Wall Street Journal reported. Though most analysts believe Spain will need assistance as it overhauls its ailing economy, the European Central Bank's recent promise of massive government bond purchases for countries seeking bailouts has brought down borrowing costs for Spain and other struggling euro-zone countries.

Eurozone leaders have given themselves three weeks to finalise an overhaul of Greece’s bailout programme, requiring parliamentary backing in creditor countries that are sceptical about reducing Athens’ interest rate burden, the Financial Times reported. But eurozone approval, which officials hope will be completed in time to release a long-delayed €31.3bn aid payment to Athens on November 27, will only be granted if the Greek parliament agrees to new austerity measures in a hotly-contested vote scheduled for Wednesday night.

The Bank of England is likely on Thursday to opt for a pause in bond purchases aimed at boosting the economy after Britain exited recession and some rate-setters voiced doubts about the policy's bite. The central bank has bought a total of 375 billion pounds- worth of British government bonds since the 2007-08 financial crisis, completing the latest round of purchases last week. Economists have been paring back expectations of more buying, or quantitative easing, in November since data showed late last month surprisingly strong GDP growth between July and September.

France's government has promised €20 billion ($25 billion) in tax credits to businesses as part of a "competitiveness pact" that it hopes will spark innovation and lower unemployment - but falls short of calls in a recent report for a "shock" to the economy, the Associated Press reported. The announcement of the plan Tuesday came a day after a government-commissioned report — by Louis Gallois, former head of Airbus parent EADS — said the country's ailing economy needed a big kick to stay globally competitive.