Headlines

An interim report by the examiner of several Irish companies in the McInerney Group may have enormous implications for the rights of creditors and the examinership process, according to a leading corporate restructuring and insolvency solicitor, InsolvencyJournal.ie reported. Julie Murphy-O’Connor is a partner in the Corporate Restructuring and Insolvency Law Group at Matheson Ormsby Prentice solicitors. She said the report by the examiner, Billy Riordan of Price Waterhouse Coopers, will be of major interest to Irish lenders and companies.

Cattles, which specialises in loans to people with poor credit histories, faces a crunch week of talks with its lenders this week as the stricken firm struggles to avoid insolvency, The Guardian reported. The restructuring firm Zolfo Cooper has been lined up as administrator if the talks fail, although sources insisted that a consensual agreement between the parties is still possible. As many as 3,000 jobs could be threatened if the firm goes under.

The closure of Bank of Scotland Ireland (BOSI) at the end of the year will leave many small and medium Irish businesses in a “precarious situation” in relation to short-term financing such as invoice discounting and overdraft facilities, according to the CEO of the Irish Small and Medium Enterprise (ISME) association, InsolvencyJournal.ie reported. Mark Fielding mentioned hotels, in particular, as potentially having trouble sourcing alternate working capital. “Very few of them would have good accounts to show for the past two years,” he said.

The tactic of investors buying bank debt to gain control of distressed companies is set to increase, a leading insolvency expert has predicted, The Irish Times reported. Tom Kavanagh, a partner in Kavanagh Fennell, acted as receiver for the Irish operations of Calyx Group, which was forced into receivership on September 3rd after Better Capital bought its debt from Anglo Irish Bank. Calyx, a diverse group of technology companies with operations in Ireland and Britain, had been struggling with debts of more than €100 million.

Tele Columbus GmbH, a German cable company operator, will restructure €1 billion ($1.2 billion) of loans in a U.K. court, according to three people familiar with the situation, Bloomberg reported. The company, controlled by Dusseldorf, Germany-based restructuring specialist Nikolaus & Co., will attend a first court hearing on Sept. 22 to reduce its debt burden in a so- called scheme of arrangement procedure, said the people, who declined to be identified because the discussions are private. An official at the High Court of London Chancery Division confirmed the hearing date.

Debt-laden energy generator Alinta Energy Ltd has entered a trading halt pending an announcement about ongoing negotiations with its lenders, the Business Spectator reported. The announcement comes amid reports that Alinta would be placed into voluntary administration next week if its financiers were unable to agree on the terms of the sale of the company by Sunday.

So loud are the howls of protest from his socialist opponents, one might think that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is about to put the nation's elderly to work in coal mines or turn them into an army of street sweepers. In fact, he is proposing merely to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62 by 2018 and also to increase by two years the age of full pension entitlement, The Wall Street Journal reported in a commentary. This relatively modest change has provoked thousands of protestors into angry demonstrations and union leaders to threaten a series of strikes.

The U.K. government set out proposals Thursday for a new special administration regime to more effectively handle investment bank insolvencies to minimize the impact on financial stability, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The scheme is designed to handle the insolvency of failing banks that aren't put into the U.K.'s existing special resolution regime, developed to ensure a systemically-important bank is rescued or sold off very quickly to avoid financial contagion.

Lismore MP Thomas George will head up a delegation of landholders and other concerned residents from the Woodenbong area meeting with the administrators and receivers of FEA (Forest Enterprises Australia), The Northern Rivers Echo reported. The timber company went into voluntary administration and partial receivership in April with debts estimated to be around $200 million.

Allied Farmers has slashed its term debt with Westpac to just $1.65 million, The New Zealand Herald reported. The rural and financing company, which reported a year to June 30 loss of $77.6 million on Friday, yesterday said it had dropped its debt from $14.2 million in the last week following two settlements. Allied managing director Rob Alloway said the company was making good progress on reducing its debt and restructuring the business. Allied, which last December acquired the loan book of Hanover and United Finance, has been in talks with Westpac over its funding since June.