Headlines

Mexico's No. 3 retailer Comercial Mexicana SAB on Thursday said it will seek investor approval at an extraordinary shareholders meeting on June 11 to restructure its debt under bankruptcy protection, Dow Jones reported. In a filing with the local stock exchange, the company said it will file for bankruptcy protection under Mexican law if the measure is backed by shareholders. Comercial Mexicana also said it will seek shareholder approval of the terms and conditions under which it will restructure its debt. The company didn't give further details in the filing.

A decision about the future of insolvent German department store chain Karstadt could take longer than expected due to a lack of suitable offers, the insolvency administration said on Thursday. This makes it less likely that the committee will decide on a buyer on Friday as initially planned because it first has to assess the various offers, which may take longer than Friday. European buyout firm Triton and billionaire Nicolas Berggruen are still in the race to acquire the department store chain, that belonged to retail and tourism group Arcandor until it filed for insolvency last year.

Australian education and childcare services provider A.B.C. Learning Centres Ltd filed for bankruptcy in a Delaware court Wednesday, more than 18 months after the company went into administration in Australia, Reuters reported. The filing comes after an Arizona jury ruled against the company earlier this month in a lawsuit over certain development contracts and ordered it to pay more than $47 million in damages to RCS Capital Development LLC. The company filed under Chapter 15 of U.S. bankruptcy law, which deals with cases involving more than one country and allows U.S.

Mortgage arrears at Irish banks rose 13 per cent in the first three months of the year, the Financial Regulator said today. At the end of March, 32,321 residential mortgages with a value of €6.1 billion were more than 90 days behind in payments, The Irish Times reported. This equates to more than 4 per cent of the total of 791,000 property loans in the State, which are worth a total of €118 billion. Some 2.8 per cent of mortgages, or €4.1 billion, were more than 180 days behind.

The Iraqi government has said it will close the state-owned Iraqi Airways after declaring it bankrupt, the BBC reported. Iraq's transportation ministry told reporters the airline would be closed following a damaging dispute with Kuwait over war reparations. Kuwait Airways says the Iraqi flag carrier owes it about $1.2bn for aircraft and plane parts taken during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. All scheduled Iraqi Airways flights have been cancelled.

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday that €24 billion (nearly $30 billion) in budget cuts aimed largely at its bloated bureaucracy are essential to restore confidence in the euro and to stop Italy living beyond its means, The Associated Press reported. Berlusconi's government bowed to market concerns about his country's high debt load and bloated public sector, springing the cuts on an unsuspecting public just weeks after ruling out painful measures. But Berlusconi said "this crisis is like no other," mandating significant and coordinated austerity measures.

Asset management company Goldsmith Capital Partners has dropped out of the bidding race for German retailer Metro's department store chain Kaufhof, Goldsmith said on Thursday. A spokesman for Metro declined to comment on the asset management company's withdrawal, but said Metro was still in talks with other interested parties, Reuters reported. He did not name names.

European buyout fund Triton plans to present a binding offer to acquire insolvent German retailer Karstadt Friday, a Triton spokesman told Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review on Wednesday. The binding offer is expected amid growing doubts that Triton is still considered a serious contender for Karstadt ahead of a final bidding deadline Friday. Initial talks between Karstadt's labor union and Triton ended unsuccessfully earlier this month amid fears about potential layoffs.

How can we get out of the debt crisis that is tearing through the eurozone, and stalking the UK, US and other countries? The answer is infinitely more complex than the European potpourri of liquidity, bad asset purchases, and arbitrary capital and market controls, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. There are three inter-related shocks going on, all of which are sapping the appetite for risk. First, the two-year-old financial crisis has captured and constrained the balance sheets of governments, in addition to those of banks and households.

The global campaign to harmonize rules for financial firms is swerving off course, threatening efforts to curb the risky bets that rocked the world economy two years ago, The Washington Post reported. As U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner lands in Europe on Wednesday, differences are growing among world leaders over how to keep the promise they made at the height of the financial crisis: that they would work together to reshape how finance is governed. Their aim was to avoid another upheaval by making financial rules consistent across borders and closing loopholes.