Headlines

Australia’s planned 40 percent tax on mining profits has set a benchmark for other countries weighing higher levies, reducing earnings forecasts for BHP Billiton Ltd. and Rio Tinto Group and the attraction of mining stocks, Bloomberg reported. Mining companies’ earnings may be cut by almost a third when the tax starts in 2012, Moody’s Investors Services said this week. The tax would be broadly credit negative for the sector and raise uncertainty for some companies over the short- to-medium term, Moody’s said this month.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Thursday that the rules he has proposed to address the euro zone's debt problems--including the possible expulsion of member states verging on insolvency--may require changes to European Union treaties, Dow Jones reported. He acknowledged that bringing about the changes would be extremely difficult and that many countries doubt such moves are possible.

Nationalised Dutch bank ABN Amro forecast more than €1 billion in second-quarter charges today, offsetting profitable results from both its units in the first quarter, The Irish Times reported. The Dutch government nationalised the local operations of former Belgian concern Fortis in October 2008, including both banks, amid a liquidity crisis. It has spent more than €26 billion on the nationalisation and subsequent support, making it one of the world's costliest rescues due to the credit crisis.

Germany's restrictions on some bearish financial bets caught much of the rest of Europe by surprise, and signaled that the euro zone's largest economy is willing to move ahead with tighter oversight of traders while the European Union's own regulatory package trundles along, The Wall Street Journal reported. In France, the euro's second-largest economy, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said Wednesday she wasn't consulted before Germany made its move to ban "naked" short sales of some securities.

Dozens of out-of-pocket Blue Chip investors packed into Auckland District Court this afternoon had mixed reactions when Mark Bryers, the man they trusted with their lost cash, was fined a total of $33,750 and ordered to do 75 hours community work, The National Business Review reported. Bryers (52), a bankrupt who has lived and worked in Sydney since 2007, faced 34 charges prosecuted by the Ministry of Economic Development for breaching the Companies Act and the Financial Reporting Act. Bryers’ Blue Chip empire collapsed in 2008, owing more than 2000 investors more than $84 million.

Hong Kong bankruptcy petitions in April fell about 18 percent from March, but were down 48 percent from a year earlier, government data showed on Thursday, Reuters reported. Petitions totalled 770 in April, down from a high of 1,872 recorded in March 2009 when the economy was hit hard by the global financial crisis. Hong Kong pulled out of recession in the second quarter of last year. Hong Kong's economy expanded 8.2 percent in the first quarter of 2010, compared with the year-earlier period. The government has forecast GDP growth for Hong Kong of between 4 and 5 percent for 2010.

U.K. mortgage lenders are offering loans to “almost prime” and “complex prime” borrowers with “minor historic credit issues” who may have experienced financial “blips.” They don’t use the word subprime. Three years after defaults on U.S. subprime mortgages sparked the worst financial crisis in almost 80 years, General Electric Co.’s GE Money unit and Investec Plc’s Kensington division are once again lending to British customers rejected by mainstream banks, Bloomberg reported. This time, they say they’re offering less money to clients with better credit histories.

Dubai World has agreed economic terms with its main creditors over the most controversial aspect of the state-owned company’s $23.5 billion debt restructuring, providing hope that the major drag on the emirate’s economy can be removed quickly, the Financial Times reported. The troubled conglomerate said on Thursday that the holding company’s co-ordinating committee of financial creditors, representing 60 per cent of the debt owed to lenders, had agreed in principle terms on the $14.4bn owed by the holding company in a proposal presented at the end of March.

Developer Orco Property Group said on Wednesday a Paris court approved a plan exiting the group from its more than year-long creditor protection period, Reuters reported. Orco said the plan's implementation and debt rescheduling will allow it to re-invest in real estate projects. It added the plan includes the repayment of 100 percent of the company's admitted claims over 10 years. Read more.

Newfoundland and Labrador struck out for a second time Tuesday in its efforts to force AbitibiBowater to pay for a costly environmental cleanup, The Canadian Press reported. Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Jacques Chamberland denied the province's request for leave to appeal a ruling by Quebec Superior Court Justice Clement Gascon. "It is my view that the province's application raises no issue which satisfies the test for granting leave to appeal under CCAA (Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act)," he wrote.