Headlines

Hungary's government said the International Monetary Fund and European Union are ignoring the economic risks of excessive austerity measures and that Budapest can't make deeper spending cuts now, despite a punishing reaction from markets after bailout-loan talks between the two sides broke off this weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Nigeria took a step closer to resolving its financial crisis on Monday when Goodluck Jonathan, president, approved the creation of a “bad bank” to soak up some of the estimated $10bn of bad loans that brought the banking system to the brink of collapse last year, the Financial Times reported. Almost a year after Nigeria’s once-booming banking sector was rocked by revelations of reckless lending gone awry, Mr Jonathan backed a public asset management company similar to those employed by Ireland and other crisis-hit rich countries.

B3 Cable Solutions is to close after the firm's receivers, Deloitte, failed to secure a new owner for the company. The Longford firm which manufactures copper-based cable has been based in Aghafad for three decades and employed approximately 100 full and part-time staff. The firm had traded in a challenging environment in recent years and was placed into receivership earlier this month by its English owners, the Manchester-based B3 Cable Solutions. Deloitte’s had been engaged in an extensive process to sell the business and assets of the company as a going concern.

Some wineries based in New Zealand's celebrated Marlborough region have gone into receivership, with more expected to follow, as the area's popular sauvignon blanc has been hit by a high New Zealand dollar, oversupply and early signs of a resurgence by Australian chardonnay, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Europe may be hoping its long-awaited bank stress tests are anti-climactic, judging from the confident comments coming from officials, Reuters reported. Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the euro zone finance ministers, doesn't expect any "big catastrophes" when results from the tests of 91 European banks are released on Friday. Mario Draghi, governor of the Bank of Italy, said the tests will show Italian banks have "adequate" resources to absorb losses if loans go bad.

The future of BP PLC has shifted in recent days from a death-watch discussion to a debate about how valuable the British oil giant will be after it finishes paying for the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, the Associated Press reported. BP gained temporary control of its broken well in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday and is counting on shutting it off permanently within weeks. Its shares have regained more than a quarter of the value lost in the wake of the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

Hungarian assets could come under selling pressure on Monday after the International Monetary Fund and European Union postponed the conclusion of a budgetary review in Budapest, insisting that the government must rethink its proposals, the Financial Times reported. Although Hungary is not in urgent need of IMF financing, the failure of the negotiations could unsettle investors who were uneasy about the country’s debt levels.

Record numbers of cash-strapped individuals and companies were pursued through the courts in the first half of the year as Irish creditors chased over €1 billion in debt, InsolvencyJournal.ie reported. Figures released by debt monitor Stubbs Gazette reveal that judgments against debtors rose a massive 416% in the first six months of the year, rising from €248 million in 2009 to over €1 billion in the first half of 2010. A judgment essentially changes the status of a debt into a Court demand, entitling the creditor to take enforcement proceedings to recover the debt.

Japan Airlines Corp said it will offer early retirement packages to pilots, co-pilots and trainees from Tuesday until Aug. 16, the Nikkei business daily reported. The debt-ridden group has set a goal of shedding 16,000, or one-third, of its employees in the current year ending March 2011. The first round of early retirement offers found 4,003 takers, the paper said. The group is looking to shed about 670 people from subsidiary Japan Airlines International Co, which has 1,450 pilots, 1,030 first officers and 300 trainee pilots on its payroll, the Nikkei said.

The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) and the State will ask the Commercial Court next Monday to fast-track the first legal challenge to the agency by businessman Paddy McKillen and 14 of his companies over the proposed transfer to Nama of €80 million of the companies’ loans, The Irish Times reported. Mr McKillen claims the €80 million credit facilities from Bank of Ireland are “fully performing”, not impaired, there is no default on repayments and transfer of the loans would have a “drastic and significantly detrimental” impact on his business and property rights.