Headlines

Millions of public sector workers plan strikes and rallies nationwide in November over public-sector pensions, union leaders said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on a government struggling with rising unemployment and weak growth, Reuters reported. Unions are locked in a bitter row with the Conservative-led coalition over controversial plans to raise public-sector pension contributions as spending cuts bite. The dispute mirrors those in continental European nations where governments are trying to rein in spending.

Scott's Real Estate Investment Trust says it supports a motion to transfer the court-supervised restructuring of Priszm Income Fund to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the Canadian Press reported. Canada's largest operator of KFC restaurants has been operating under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act since March but Priszm's secured creditors say the income trust can't be salvaged as a going concern.

In the face of heightened market pressure to resolve the Greek debt crisis, the president of France and the chancellor of Germany will hold a video conference call Wednesday evening with the Greek prime minister, George A. Papandreou, officials announced Tuesday, with the prospect of a further restructuring of Greek debt hovering in the air, the International Herald Tribune reported. President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel initially planned a joint statement in support of their banks earlier Tuesday, but Berlin argued against it as unnecessary, French officials said.

Athens’s inability to get a grip on the debt problem is rattling markets and giving rise to talk of a notion that until recently has been considered taboo: a eurozone without Greece, The Christian Science Monitor reported. Greece's introduction last weekend of a new real estate tax and reduction in elected officials' pay are being called too little, too late to address its deep debt.

Cash-strapped car maker Saab's first bankruptcy hearing will be on September 26, a district court said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Saab, owned by Netherlands-listed Swan Automobile, has been called to the lower court in the southern Swedish town of Vanersborg, the court said in a brief statement. Two white-collar unions at Saab, whose members had their June and July salaries delayed and have not yet been paid for August, served bankruptcy applications on Monday to ensure the activation of a state wage-insurance scheme.

Portugal should get the next installment of its euro78 billion ($107 billion) bailout package because it is expected to meet its debt-cutting targets this year, a report from the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. Portugal asked for a rescue earlier this year as it slid towards bankruptcy and stoked investor fears about the wider eurozone's fiscal problems. Its European partners and the International Monetary Fund agreed to lend it money on condition it met a strict timetable of measures, including austerity packages and economic reforms, through 2013.

High levels of bad and classified loans weighed on the finances of the Makati-based LBC Development Bank, which was recently closed by the Bangko Sentral and placed under the receivership of the government’s Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp, Manila Standard Today reported. Data from the Bangko Sentral showed that LBC Development Bank, a thrift bank formerly known as the Banco Real Development Bank that was taken over by the LBC Group of Companies in 1995, suffered from high levels of bad and classified loans.

Anglo Irish Bank and Seán Quinn exchanged harsh criticisms ahead of a High Court decision today on whether to restrain Mr Quinn and certain family members from alleged asset-stripping in their overseas property group, the Irish Times reported. Mr Quinn claimed Anglo was pursuing a vendetta against him and his children and ignoring its obligations to the State by agreeing “the worst possible deal” on the restructuring of his group. He claimed the Minister for Finance was misled when he said last April that Quinn Group had been relieved of almost half of its debt in the restructuring.

Europe's banks, burdened by concerns about exposure to ailing Greece, took a perilous turn Monday despite efforts by the biggest of them to calm panicked investors, The Wall Street Journal reported. France's financial system was especially hard hit, with shares in its three largest banks all falling more than 10%, as concerns about Greek default continued to cascade across Europe. European banks are cutting back on dollar-denominated loans, a troublesome sign of credit contraction at a time when American and European economies can least afford it.

Dubai developer Nakheel , which completed a complex debt restructuring last month, wrote off up to 78.6 billion dirhams ($21.4 billion) of its real estate assets due to a property crisis in the emirate, according to a bond prospectus, Reuters reported. Nakheel, which overstretched itself building islands in the shape of palms and other ambitious projects, incurred impairments of 73.8 billion dirhams in 2009, primarily related to the carrying value of assets and capital work in progress.