Headlines

National Irish Bank (NIB) has set aside €146 million for loan impairment charges related to losses on commercial property transactions, The Irish Times reported. The bank, which is outside the Government's guarantee scheme, said impairment charges related to bad loans were down €52 million on last year. The Danish-owned lender today reported losses of €133 million for the first three months of the year, saying economic conditions remained “very difficult”. The bank’s total loan book was €10.2 billion, down 5 per cent on last year.

The politician at the centre of Europe’s first big criminal trial of the credit crisis has urged banks to stop putting short-term gain ahead of long-term relationships with their customers. Ahead of Thursday’s opening of a trial against JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Deutsche Bank and Depfa, Letizia Moratti, mayor of Milan, rejected suggestions that Italy’s financial centre should have been a more sophisticated investor when dealing with derivatives, saying it had been duped.

A general strike Wednesday in Greece was halting flights, trains and ferries and paralyzing public services, as unions rally against major new spending cuts aimed at saving the country from bankruptcy, The Associated Press reported. All flights into and out of Greece stopped at midnight Tuesday. Schools, hospitals, tax offices and the Acropolis along with other ancient sites will be closed. There will be no news broadcasts, and shop owners have been called on to close their shutters during rallies.

The sell-off in global markets has accelerated amid fears that the eurozone debt crisis would worsen and that China’s recovery is faltering, the Financial Times reported. From Hong Kong to New York, there was mounting concern that the €110bn international rescue package for Greece would not prevent the crisis spreading from Athens to other highly indebted eurozone nations. The euro dropped to a one-year low against the dollar, European shares plumbed two-month lows and the bond markets of weaker eurozone economies fell as rattled investors sold risky assets.

Sydney-based printing group Scott Printing has entered voluntary administration, though the director said he was confident of being able to return to trading, ProPrint reported. Director Andrew Scott told ProPrint that Crouch Amirbeaggi was appointed administrators on 27 April. The Scott Printing Group comprises Hippo Books, Centatime Publishing and Edgecliff Print, though the director said Edgecliff Print was not included in the administration. Scott said the group was continuing to trade, and he expected them to do so into the future.

Barclays Plc had “a right to walk away” from a 2008 deal to buy bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s brokerage unit and would have if certain assets had been left out, the U.K. bank’s top in-house lawyer said, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. “That was clearly in Barclays’s mind at that point in time,” Jonathan Hughes, Barclays’s global general counsel, told a bankruptcy judge in New York today, referring to the bank’s discovery during the negotiations that Lehman couldn’t deliver all the promised assets.

New statistics compiled by InsolvencyJournal.ie reveal that insolvencies in the first four months of 2010, have increased by 27 per cent compared to the same period last year, Finfacts reported. A total of 532 company failures were recorded so far this year, compared to 419 between January and April 2009. 125 companies went bust in April, down 15 per cent from the March total of 147 insolvencies. Dublin continues to account for the majority of failures with 52 insolvencies - - 42 per cent of all insolvencies.

European Central Bank President Jean- Claude Trichet, who capitulated on a January pledge not to relax lending rules for the sake of one country, may have to sacrifice more principles to prevent Greece from bringing down the euro, Bloomberg reported. Trichet yesterday diluted rules for the second time in a month to guarantee the ECB will keep taking Greek government bonds as collateral for loans.

The €110 billion ($147 billion) three-year Greek bailout by euro-zone countries and the International Monetary Fund won't be enough to cover Greece's costs, an examination of Greek financial figures shows, setting Europe up for more tough choices if private markets don't start lending again, The Wall Street Journal reported. The bailout announced here over the weekend will solve one pressing problem: Greece will have enough cash to repay an €8.5 billion bond that comes due in two weeks.

The Canadian media landscape is poised for a major shake-up that could result in greater competition as a result of moves by Shaw Communications Inc. and Torstar Corp. to buy the television and newspaper assets, respectively, of Canwest Global Communications Corp., Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. CanWest has been selling assets as part of its ongoing bankruptcy protection proceedings to pay off its creditors. As part of the deal for Canwest's television operations, Shaw has reached an agreement with Goldman Sachs Group Inc.