Headlines

More than 50,000 Spanish solar entrepreneurs face financial disaster as policy makers contemplate cutting the price guarantees that attracted their investment in the first place, Bloomberg reported. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero introduced the subsidies three years ago as part of an effort to cut his country’s dependence on fossil fuels. At the time, he promised that the investment in renewable energy would create manufacturing jobs and that Spain could sell its panels to nations seeking to reduce carbon emissions.

Wind Hellas's creditors have wrested control of the Greek telecommunications company from Egyptian entrepreneur Naguib Sawiris after agreeing to a EUR420 million cash injection, the company said in a statement Monday, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The announcement ends negotiations between creditor groups that dragged beyond last Thursday's deadline after bidders revised their offers.

Ten retirement villages that are owned by the listed Prime Retirement and Aged Care Property Trust have been placed in the hands of receivers after banks including National Australia Bank and Suncorp Metway lost patience with the group, smartcompany.au reported. While Prime Retirement and Aged Care Property Trust are not in receivership, the board expects to appoint administrators from PwC as early as today. Suncorp appointed receivers from Ernst & Young to Prime Trust's retirement villages in Bundaberg, Mackay and Townsville on Friday afternoon.

Policy makers at the European Central Bank face the same high unemployment and slow growth that dogs their friends across the Atlantic at the Federal Reserve. But don't expect the ECB to follow the Fed in taking extraordinary measures to try to get things moving again, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Fed thinks it can and should use the tools at its disposal, in this case buying U.S. Treasury bonds to bring down long-term interest rates and goose growth, because doing so will bring down the jobless rate. The Europeans won't have any of it.

High school students clashed with police and protesters blocked two main highways in France on Monday as confrontation stiffened between an array of strikers and the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy over plans to raise the minimum age for retirement, The New York Times reported. The protests, as labor unions called for national stoppages on Tuesday, came as the Senate prepared to vote on Wednesday on a package of reforms to the retirement system proposed by Mr. Sarkozy to wrest France from the economic doldrums gripping many parts of Europe.

Financial regulator Matthew Elderfield called for an urgent review of Ireland’s bankruptcy laws as international ratings agency Moody’s reported a growing number of Irish mortgage holders are in arrears, The Irish Times reported. Reform of the bankruptcy regime could allow borrowers to earn a fresh start by discharging their debt over a reasonable period of time, Mr Elderfield said. However, he cautioned against debt forgiveness for the thousands of mortgage holders currently behind with payments on their loans.

The Treasury estimates the receivership of South Canterbury Finance could take up to four years to complete, unless sold as a going concern, with the majority of assets being sold only in the second year of receivership, The National Business Review reported. The estimates are given in a report dated September 1 – at the same time as other documents revealed the government’s reasons for rejecting a post receivership offer to buy SCF as a going concern. That offer reportedly came from investor Duncan Saville and was understood to be worth approximately $1.3 billion.

Mexico's largest nonbank mortgage lender, Hipotecaria Su Casita, said Thursday that it missed principal and interest payments on local notes for a total of MXN730.7 million ($58.7 million), but added that negotiations continue with creditors on a restructuring, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Despite the defaults, "negotiations with holders of these notes and with the rest of Su Casita's creditors continue aimed at reaching an agreement for the financial restructuring of the company," Su Casita said.

Nortel Networks Corp. Thursday postponed a hearing on the appointment of a mediator to help broker an end to disputes over the cash raised in the liquidation of its global telecommunications equipment business, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Lawyers for U.K. retirees whose pensions are in jeopardy due to Nortel's bankruptcy have petitioned to be part of the mediation, and the company is in talks with them, said James Bromley, attorney for Nortel. The Toronto company and its creditors want to summon Layn R.

This northeast England town has long boasted it has the largest office complex in Europe. But the 8,000 employees who fill two gray buildings here known informally as "the Ministry" all work for the government. And their boss, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, is about to send many of them home for good. Most work for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, the tax agency. Their jobs are the legacy of decades of spending—especially by the prior Labour Party government—that pumped public money into Longbenton and similar places as factories closed.