Headlines

European finance ministers debated Monday how to beef up their giant rescue fund for troubled euro-zone countries but ended the first day of a two-day meeting without reaching a firm resolution on how to do it, amid German reluctance to open the doors to more and bigger bailouts, The Wall Street Journal reported. Germany's disinclination to speed ahead dovetails with what European diplomats describe as a momentary air of calm that has descended on the bloc's sovereign debt crisis.

Receivers for Burrup Fertilisers are examining whether an Australia-India extradiction treaty could be used against Pankaj Oswal, The Australian reported. Mr Oswal left Australia just before ANZ Bank appointed receivers to his fertiliser empire on December 17. He confirmed at the weekend that he and his family would not return to Perth. He said he was living in New Delhi but may relocate to Dubai, close to where he has plans to develop a $400 million caustic soda plant in Oman.

A major creditor filed on Monday an insolvency claim against the dominant Czech lottery firm Sazka, a court said, raising the stakes in a battle for control of the indebted firm, Reuters reported. A company controlled by real estate investor Radovan Vitek filed the claim with Prague City Court after he said Sazka failed to make timely payment on 820 million crowns ($44.78 million) of its debt he had acquired from banks.

Singapore’s bankruptcy applications last year fell to the lowest level since 1996 as the city- state’s economy rebounded, posting the world’s fastest growth after Qatar, Bloomberg reported. The number of bankruptcy filings dropped 20 percent to 2,202 in 2010 from a year earlier, according to data on the Ministry of Law’s website. Bankruptcy applications last year were less than half of the 5,404 cases at the peak in 2003. Singapore’s economic growth reached 14.7 percent last year as manufacturing surged, capping the biggest annual increase in output since independence in 1965.

Hyundai Motor Group on Friday signed a preliminary agreement to buy Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co. in a deal worth up to $4.72 billion, a step that brings nearer the completion of the drawn-out sale process for South Korea's largest construction company, which has been marked by a fierce family feud, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Hyundai E&C, the founding component of what was once the country's largest conglomerate, was put on the block in July.

Brussels this week has been abuzz with ideas about how to make the euro zone's main bailout fund more effective, The Wall Street Journal’s Brussels Beat blog reported in a commentary. As the crisis that started in Greece and enveloped Ireland now threatens to overtake Portugal, it's evident that the European Financial Stability Fund has not provided a firebreak between countries that its architects hoped for when it was created in May.

Sudan’s government wants its $38 billion debt forgiven by international lenders before it separates from an independent Southern Sudan, said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported. “A substantial portion of it should be forgiven so their limited resources are not going out to rich nations, who I think can certainly afford the debt,” Carter told reporters today in Juba, capital of the semi-autonomous region of Southern Sudan. Southern Sudan began a weeklong referendum on Jan.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said Ireland cannot benefit from the EU’s financial aid while maintaining its low corporate tax rate, the Irish Times reported. Making the case for closer fiscal harmonisation between euro zone states, Mr Sarkozy said: “I deeply respect our Irish friends’ independence and we have done everything to help them. But they cannot continue to say ‘come and help us’ while keeping a tax on company profits that is half [that of other countries]…We cannot speak about economic integration without the convergence of fiscal systems . . .

Europe has yet to allay investor “skepticism” about the sustainability of the region’s debt, and any spread of the crisis would cloud global economic prospects, the International Monetary Fund’s number three official said, Bloomberg reported. “At least for now it looks like the spillover from the European sovereign crisis to areas outside of the region will be limited,” Naoyuki Shinohara, deputy managing director at the IMF, said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday.

The Bank of Korea raised its benchmark interest rate Thursday, while the government issued a package of steps to stabilize consumer prices, moves that show the concern among policy makers about building inflationary pressures as the economy recovers, The Wall Street Journal reported. The central bank's surprise decision to raise its policy rate by 0.25 percentage point to 2.75% and the government's set of measures, including a freeze on public-service charges such as those for electricity and gas, show how the authorities now view inflation as one of their main policy challenges.