Headlines

Chinese investors who have applied to buy the Crafar family's dairy farmers from receivers say they think the purchase will be allowed by regulators at the Overseas Investment Office, The National Business Review reported. Natural Dairy NZ Holdings Ltd has applied to buy the 80% it does not already own in UBNZ Assets Holdings Ltd as part of the planned purchase of 16 North Island farms owned by the Crafars and put into receivership 12 months ago, when debts topped $200 million. The 8615ha of dairy farms, mostly in the North Island, run about 25,000 dairy cattle.

Adesto Technologies Inc., a developer of low-power memory chips for consumer electronics, says it has acquired intellectual property and patents from German semiconductor company Qimonda AG, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Adesto bought Qimonda intellectual property and patents related to Conductive Bridging Random Access Memory, or CBRAM, technology. The agreement includes the purchase of 30 CBRAM patent families and the licensing of additional undisclosed patents. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Ireland’s Financial Regulator Matthew Elderfield told an Oireachtas committee today that there should be caution about imposing losses on holders of senior debt in insolvent Irish financial institutions, Finfacts reported. Elderfield said the Government has made its position clear on this matter and it does not intend to impose losses on senior bond holders. However, this does not rule out the possibility of some negotiations or a liquidity management exercise agreed by consent.

Mexican banking concern Ixe Grupo Financiero SAB said Tuesday that it may participate "with a very small stake" in grounded airline Grupo Mexicana if negotiations to bring the carrier out of bankruptcy proceedings are successful, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported.

The International Monetary Fund said today that the financial sector remains the 'Achilles’ heel' of the economic recovery, Finfacts reported. The Fund published its latest Global Financial Stability Report today and it said that its baseline scenario is for a gradual improvement in financial stability as the ongoing economic recovery continues but substantial downside risks remain.

Kenya’s public pensions provider, the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), risks losing a significant portion of its movable assets next week over a Sh663 million debt it owes a developer for breach of contract, Business Daily Africa reported. NSSF was left holding the multi-million shilling debt after it lost a legal tussle pitting it against a company it had contracted to build an estate in Nairobi’s upmarket Kitisuru area.

A new, more draconian tax on bonuses should be slapped on banks, a leading Liberal Democrat said tonight after the Royal Bank of Scotland chairman admitted that regulation was the only way to restrain the annual bonanza for bankers, the Guardian reported. Amid estimates that the City would pay out £7bn in bonuses this year, Lord Oakeshott said the moment had now come to reintroduce a tax on bonuses which, when imposed on the banks last year, brought in £3.5bn for the exchequer.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen insisted he did not know Anglo Irish Bank was facing insolvency the night the Government issued a blanket bank guarantee, despite attending an earlier meeting at which officials discussed the bank’s situation, The Irish Times reported. Mr Cowen told Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore “No, I didn’t” when asked if he knew about Anglo’s insolvency that night in September 2008 when the guarantee was issued. Bank of Ireland and AIB had emergency talks with the Government after Anglo told Bank of Ireland it was facing insolvency and sought a takeover.

A legal mechanism for imposing reduced terms on a secured creditor is theoretically possible but would present significant practical difficulties, the High Court has heard, InsolvencyJournal.ie reported. In a hearing yesterday Mr Justice Frank Clarke continued the examinership of several companies in the McInerney home building group after concluding that one of three possibilities outlined in a report prepared by the examiner allowed for a realistic chance of the companies’ survival.

The Russian central bank on Tuesday said it was canceling the license of a leading commercial bank for the first time since the financial crisis broke in 2008, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported on an Agence France-Presse story. The International Industrial Bank, controlled by Russian tycoon Sergei Pugachev, was losing its license for violating a string of regulations, the Russian Central Bank said in a statement on its website. The IIB had failed to report accurate data on its accounts and had been unable to satisfy its obligations towards creditors, the bank said.