Headlines

Investors and analysts who think a government bailout for the troubled French banking sector is increasingly likely are focussing on what form any aid could take, even as banks continue to deny they need state help, Reuters reported.

Financial regulators' decision to close seven troubled savings banks earlier this week spawned dramatic scenes of angry depositors outside locked branch offices and, on Friday, the suicide of an executive at one of the closed-down institutions, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The savings-bank industry, with just over 100 institutions and 2.4% of the nation's financial assets, is a small niche in South Korea's financial industry.

China's massive economic-stimulus program has supported near double-digit growth, but also Suncity Co , a condominium developer based in Japan's quake-hit northeast, said it filed for bankruptcy protection with the Sendai District Court on Monday with 24.9 billion yen ($326.5 million) in liabilities after sales plunged in the wake of the March disaster, Reuters reported. Investment firm FinTech Global said it would back Suncity's restructuring. Suncity, which employs 159 people, said that it plans to delist its shares from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Irish house prices continued to fall last month, and at a faster pace than the previous month, the Irish Times reported. House prices dropped 1.6 per cent in August, compared to a 0.8 per cent fall in July. On an annual basis, house prices were 13.9 per cent lower last month than the previous August. This compares to an annual rate of decline of 12.5 per cent in July. The latest monthly figures, which were released by the CSO today, mean that residential properties are now 43 per cent lower than in 2007.

Sir Michael Fay says his group's bid for the Crafar farms remains on the table despite being rejected by the receivers yesterday, The New Zealand Herald reported. The group's $171.5 million offer is almost $30 million short of that from China's Pengxin International Group. KordaMentha receiver Brendon Gibson said the accepted Pengxin offer was by far the best offer and remained so. Regarding Fay's offer, he said: "It was conditional and a collaboration of several companies and was a price that we think was unacceptable, so no go on any of those fronts.

The German government is pushing a plan to restructure Greece's debt that would include up to a 50% loss to bond holders and new draconian budget measures imposed on the Greek government, local media report Sunday. According to the center-right Kathimerini newspaper, the German plan would involve a forced, non-voluntary restructuring of Greece's public debt, that would include slashing the value of that debt by between 40% and 50%, Dow Jones reported.

As the Gillard government digests a set of submissions on how to clean up the insolvency industry after a Senate inquiry found the Australian Securities and Investments Commission was not regulating it properly, Senator John Williams has put the spotlight back on the commission using parliamentary privilege to do so, The Sydney Morning Herald reported in a commentary.

China's massive economic-stimulus program has supported near double-digit growth, but also stoked inflation, piled up debt and fueled another unwelcome development: social unrest, The Wall Street Journal reported. In 2010, China was rocked by 180,000 protests, riots and other mass incidents—more than four times the tally from a decade earlier. That figure, reported by Sun Liping, a professor at Tsinghua University, rather than official sources, doesn't tell the whole story on the turmoil in what is now the world's second-largest economy.

France has denied reports that it had drafted a plan to inject up to €15 billion into its major banks amid fears over their heavy exposure to Greek debt, the Irish Times reported. The Journal du Dimanche yesterday reported that the state offered a €10-15 billion bank recapitalisation at a meeting earlier this month with senior officials from five institutions: BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Crédit Agricole, Banque Populaire-Caisse d’Épargne and Crédit Mutuel.

A Nova Scotia judge has approved a plan to pay a portion of the debts owed to about 300 wood suppliers and silviculture operators while a buyer is sought for the shuttered NewPage Port Hawkesbury paper mill, CanadianBusiness.com reported on a Canadian Press story. The Supreme Court order would see the money come from the provincial government and a fund set up by NewPage, which closed its Point Tupper operation earlier this month. The government is eager to keep the woodland operators in business as the search for a possible buyer continues.