Headlines

The German government has moved forward a meeting to discuss aid for troubled automaker Opel, as workers demonstrated Monday in favour of loan guarantees that appeared to be slipping away. A meeting of the fund set up to help enterprises was scheduled for Wednesday, an economy ministry spokesman told AFP, instead of Friday as initially planned. Opel has asked governments of countries where its European operations are located for €1.8 billion ($2.2 billion) in loan guarantees so the company can obtain financing at reasonable rates on capital markets.

The former Fortescue Metals chairman Gordon Toll may feel slightly conflicted next week when shareholders of Compass Resources vote on a proposed recapitalisation of the miner. It is never easy being a major creditor and chairman of a former sharemarket darling that has been placed into voluntary administration, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. It is even harder when you ask shareholders of a company once worth $770 million to vote on a deed of company arrangement under which their stake will be diluted to 5 per cent, in return for cancelling out $73 million of debts.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to push hard to get the German parliament to approve last month's €750 billion (nearly $1 trillion) rescue package for Greece and other weaker members of the 16-nation eurozone. She did it because she and other European heads of state worry that a default by Greece, Portugal, or Spain would destroy the credibility of the euro, The Christian Science Monitor reported in a commentary.

Finance ministers from the debt-stricken euro zone sought to restore financial markets' confidence on Monday by agreeing how to deploy a vast anti-contagion program if needed by struggling members, Reuters reported. Germany's coalition government agreed in parallel to budget cuts and taxes worth 11.2 billion euros next year -- and more than 80 billion euros by the end of 2014 -- in the latest of a series of austerity plans being hatched across the euro zone.

Billionaire investor Nicolas Berggruen has won a bid to acquire German retailer Karstadt, ending a months-long saga to line up new owners for the insolvent department store chain, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Terms of the deal weren't immediately provided by Karstadt's insolvency administrator or Berggruen's holding company, which announced the deal late Monday.

Begbies Traynor, the corporate insolvency specialist, continues to expect UK companies going bust because of the recession, the Financial Times reported. “There are lots of zombie businesses, which are effectively the walking dead and have no chance of actually coming back to life,” said Ric Traynor, executive chairman. Most of the pain from the recession had yet to be felt, he added. Mr Traynor said he had yet to see any rise in the number of corporate insolvencies this year.

Japan Airlines is experiencing passenger demand ahead of the conservative expectations outlined in its restructuring plan, the airline's president said on Sunday. The success of the plan does not rely on a certain level of passenger demand, but JAL is ahead of where it expected to be, Masaru Onishi told Reuters on the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association's annual meeting. Onishi added that the implementation of the restructuring plan was generally on track.

An insolvency practitioner says a High Court decision that the taxman still comes first in a voluntary administration undermines the fledgling system and may deny struggling businesses the chance to avoid liquidation, The New Zealand Herald reported. Voluntary administration was introduced in 2007 as an alternative to liquidation or receivership. The aim is to rehabilitate companies, and it can result in unsecured creditors getting more of their money back.

A boutique hotel backed by the businessmen Paddy Kelly and Niall McFadden has gone into receivership, The Sunday Business Post reported. Ulster Bank has taken possession of Lisloughrey Lodge, a country house hotel next to Ashford Castle in Cong, Co Mayo. The bank has a €10 million exposure to the hotel. Kieran Wallace, head of insolvency with KPMG accountants, has been installed as receiver over the property. A meeting of creditors will take place later this month to appoint a liquidator.

Finance ministers of the world’s leading economies have been so spooked by the sovereign debt crisis that they have decided they can no longer wait until economies are growing strongly before they remove fiscal stimulus, the Financial Times reported. The meeting of the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Busan, South Korea, at the weekend also dropped proposals for a global banking levy, giving countries leeway to do what they thought best for their domestic circumstances.