Headlines

Ireland's banking regulator said it will take years for investors to regain confidence in the country's banks, which in the meantime are likely to remain reliant on funding from central banks, The Wall Street Journal reported. "It's going to take a while before there's an Irish bond issue" from a bank, said Matthew Elderfield, the head of financial regulation at the Central Bank of Ireland, in an interview in London on Wednesday. "We may get some market interest in a couple years' time." Mr.

Japan Airlines on Wednesday said it is seeking 200 employees to volunteer for unpaid leave, as it tries to cut costs due to falling travel demand after the March 11 disasters and amid a nuclear crisis, Agence France-Presse reported. The appeal comes just after the airline finally moved out of bankruptcy following its spectacular collapse that led it to go cap-in-hand to the government. "Due to a drop in visitors and cutbacks in routes, we are seeking 200 pilots and flight attendants to volunteer for a month of unpaid leave," said Japan Airlines spokesman Taro Namba.

Mexican satellite company Satelites Mexicanos SA de C.V. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Wednesday after reaching a deal on a restructuring plan with most of its noteholders, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The company, which emerged from an earlier Chapter 11 restructuring in 2006, sought protection from creditors in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., listing assets of $441.6 million and liabilities of $531.6 million.

Eircom chief executive Paul Donovan told staff yesterday that he will not get a bonus of €4 million in 2012, as was reported by a Sunday newspaper last weekend, the Irish Times reported. But Mr Donovan made no comment on whether a two-year, voluntary pay cut of 10 per cent that he accepted in 2009 would be reversed in July, as was previously agreed with the company. The media report had angered many staff in Eircom, who only last week agreed to accept the terms of a wide-ranging restructuring plan aimed at reducing labour costs by €92 million.

A possible bailout of AMI Insurance will see the Government pump up to $500 million of equity into the ailing insurer and hold the right to take control of the company. But the final cost could be double that, The National Business Review reported. Finance Minister Bill English announced the support package today saying it would only be called on as a last resort if the insurer's reserves were exhausted.

Portugal is holding talks with the European Union on how to meet its immediate borrowing needs as its banks press Lisbon to seek a bridging loan until a new government can negotiate a bail-out deal, the Financial Times reported. Portuguese banks have been the biggest purchasers of the government’s bonds in recent months, but bankers said some lenders were now reluctant to buy more sovereign debt. The country’s long-term credit rating was downgraded by Moody’s by one notch to Baa1 on Tuesday.

José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, said yesterday reducing the bailout debt rate for Ireland and Greece was not only fair but would assure sustainability of the debt, the Irish Times reported. Costs which would be “very, very difficult for our Greek or Irish citizens to pay” could not be imposed. Mr Barroso said all member states must express solidarity but also shoulder responsibility.

Three years into Spain's economic crisis, the worst could still be to come for the country's ailing banks as they grapple with falling profits and rising bad debt, the central bank chief warned Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. "2011 will be another year of adjustment, and for the banking sector, it will be one of the worst," Bank of Spain Governor Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez said at a conference. Mr.

German state-controlled lender Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, or LBBW, will likely kick off the sale of its German residential property portfolio worth about EUR1.3 billion ($1.8 billion) this summer, a spokesman for the bank said, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The LBBW spokesman said the bank "is preparing the sale of LBBW Immobilien's residential real estate, as required by the EU." However, a final decision over the details of the sale "will likely take until the summer of 2011," considering legal aspects and the complexity of the issue involved, the LBBW spokesman said.

A Perth building company with about $30 million in contracts from the Building the Education Revolution program has fallen into administration, pinning the blame for its financial woes on the West Australian government's mismanagement of the scheme, The Australian reported. Midland Constructions owes its creditors more than $3m and has been forced to halt work at schools in Perth's eastern suburbs and Avon Valley.