Headlines

When China announced a flagship program to make its currency more international in the summer of 2009, it cited "the growing call" from Chinese trading partners to use the yuan in cross-border transactions. More than a year later, the People's Bank of China touted the program as a "breakthrough," citing a surge in the amount of trade in the currency. Not everything went according to plan, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Ireland's bailout package should be made more flexible to help the eurozone struggler recover faster from its crisis and ensure its return to debt markets, Europe's top economics official said in an opinion piece in an Irish newspaper, Reuters reported. In an article to be published in the Sunday Business Post, Olli Rehn called for the interest rates on Ireland's loans and the maturity of the debt to be lengthened. "Ireland provides hard evidence that the EU-IMF conditional financial support approach is working," Rehn, the EU's economic and monetary affairs commissioner, wrote.

The group representing Greece’s private creditors said Sunday that progress was being made in discussions on international banks’ involvement in the next Greek bailout and that talks would continue this week before a meeting of European leaders on Thursday, the International Herald Tribune reported. Charles Dallara, the managing director of the Institute for International Finance, an organization representing major global financial firms, said that “discussions are continuing and progress is being made.” Mr.

The state is facing a legal costs bill estimated at up to €7 million following property investor Paddy McKillen’s successful legal challenge to the proposed acquisition by the National Assets Management Agency of about €1.4 billion in loans of his companies, the Irish Times reported. Mr McKillen secured a legal costs order from a seven-judge Supreme Court against Nama yesterday as it emerged the agency has now decided not to acquire the loans that were at the centre of High and Supreme Court proceedings lasting 12 days and involving huge costs.

The teetering retail empire Austexx, one-time owners of the Direct Factory Outlet shopping centre in Sydney, is again in crisis with receivers called in to take control of its Spencer Street property in Melbourne over a debt of up to $360 million, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. In another hammer blow for the troubled group, the financier BOS International appointed Craig Shepard and Leanne Chesser of KordaMentha receivers over two companies that own the struggling shopping centre above Southern Cross station.

China has resumed drafting a bankruptcy law for banks, an effort that had been suspended during the global financial crisis, the news service Caixin reported on Thursday. China's banking regulator is in the preliminary stages of drafting such a law and is studying legislation in developed countries, Caixin quoted a source at the China Banking Regulatory Commission as saying, Reuters reported.

Even as the Italian Senate rushed through approval of a deficit-cutting austerity package on Thursday to fend off a sovereign debt crisis, doubts were growing about the staying power of the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the International Herald Tribune reported. The bill, which passed in a confidence vote by 161 to 135, moves to the lower house for final approval on Friday, where it is all but certain to pass. What happens afterward is far less clear. The center-left opposition has been stepping up calls for Mr.

The European Union's banking "stress tests," designed to bolster confidence in the Continent's financial system, are facing a last-minute scramble as regulators adjust the exam's terms and bankers and politicians criticize the process and lobby for changes, The Wall Street Journal reported. The European Banking Authority, the pan-EU regulator that is conducting the exercise, plans to announce the test results on Friday. The tests measure the abilities of 91 major banks in 21 European countries to withstand a sharply deteriorating economic environment.

The Bank of Korea (BOK) kept the country’s policy rate unchanged at 3.25 percent despite high inflation, as the heightened uncertainty surrounding European financial troubles dissuaded rate setters from hiking, The Korea Times reported. The decision by the central bank’s monetary policy committee Thursday had been widely expected and BOK Governor Kim Choong-soo warned against raising interest rates too quickly, insisting that the country has already suffered the worst of the inflationary pressures.

The impact of the recession on families is reflected in cases brought to court, according to a new report, the Irish Times reported. The annual report of the Courts Service shows an increase in bankruptcies, orders for possession, judgments for recovery of debt and judgment mortgages. However, there has been a decline in cases involving companies, with a 9 per cent decrease in orders to wind up companies, a 6 per cent fall in applications to restrict directors and a 21 per cent drop in new cases admitted to the Commercial Court list in the High Court.