Headlines

Drydocks World (DDW), a unit of debt-ridden Dubai World, expects talks on terms of its core debt to be concluded with months, after agreeing a new $200 million credit facility, an official statement said, Reuters reported. The shipbuilding arm of Dubai World said last year it was in talks with banks to restructure $1.7 billion in debt maturing in November 2011.

Music and books retailer HMV has appointed accountancy firm KPMG to advise on its debt and help it meet an April test of its borrowing rules, a source familiar with the situation said, the Irish Times reported. The source said today that KPMG, already an adviser to HMV, has been given the additional task of tackling the company's debt, reported as £152 million when it published half-year results in December. That is more than the company's market capitalisation of about £108 million.

A Munich court ruled on Thursday a squeeze-out of minority shareholders was appropriate in a nationalisation of German mortgage bank Hypo Real Estate, Reuters reported. Presiding judge Helmut Krenek said the move to nationalise the Munich-based property lender had been proportionate and, given the circumstances, was not an act of expropriation. A group of 38 shareholders, including U.S. investor J.C. Flowers, had sought to block the transfer of their shares.

Czech lottery firm Sazka AS has asked its bondholders to agree to a 30% to 33% reduction in principal on outstanding bonds and to lowering the yield on the bonds to 6% from 9% to enable the company to continue operating and not move into bankruptcy, newspaper Hospodarske Noviny reported. Sazka hasn't disclosed the names of the bondholders, who together hold EUR215 million worth of bonds, the paper reported. Local financial institutions have declined to comment on the topic.

Industrial parts maker NN Inc. said Thursday that it is halting operations at its German manufacturing plant, which has filed for local bankruptcy protection, Bloomberg reported. NN said the global recession and rising cost of operating in Germany forced it to close the Kugelfertigung Eltmann factory, which makes precision steel balls for industrial and aerospace customers. "Unfortunately, we cannot forecast an improvement in the operations of Eltmann to reverse this condition for the foreseeable future," said Chairman and CEO Roderick Baty said in a statement.

Airline Mexicana de Aviacion, grounded last year amid bankruptcy proceedings, carried out two test flights Thursday in what authorities hope to be a harbinger of the company's eventual relaunch, Dow Jones reported. Two Airbus A320s, operated by Mexicana, flew to Acapulco from Mexico City and back to re-certify their engines, Labor Minister Javier Lozano said in a posting on his Twitter account. "Next week there will be more Mexicana flights for the company's certification," he said.

Three Icelandic banks that were taken into state ownership following their collapse in 2008 could go fully public within about five years and may be further restructured in the meantime, according to the director general of Icelandic Financial Supervisory Authority, or FME, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Gunnar T. Andersen said two of the three largest Icelandic banks could be merged. The three banks - Landsbanki, Kaupthing and Glitnir - failed in 2008 and were nationalized as the financial crisis gripped the country. They have since been reorganized.

U.K. consumers face a brutal squeeze in 2011 as wage increases fail to keep pace with soaring inflation and the threat of rising unemployment tempers people's ability to negotiate pay increases, The Wall Street Journal reported. Data showed Wednesday that in the three months to November, growth in pay, excluding bonuses, remained at 2.3%, while data Tuesday showed annual inflation jumped to 3.7% in December from 3.3% in November.

It's the end of the line for the dream of building a world-class metakaolin plant in the Wood Mountain area of south-central Saskatchewan. Last month, Whitemud Resources was ordered into receivership by its major lender, Canadian Western Bank, and $67 million of the company's assets were put up for sale to the highest bidder, The Star Phoenix reported. The Calgary-based company had suspended operations in November after a financing proposal by Werklund Capital Corp. was withdrawn.

One year after its spectacular bankruptcy filing, Japan Airlines on Wednesday faced a lawsuit from 146 former pilots and cabin attendants calling for their jobs back after being made redundant, Agence France-Presse reported. The case, filed with the Tokyo District Court, claims JAL management did not do enough to avoid the layoffs. The company's court-approved rehabilitation plan calls for cutting about 16,000 jobs.