Headlines

Struggling Japan Airlines is to cut 45 more international and domestic routes this financial year as it accelerates its plan to return to profitability, it said Wednesday. The airline, being restructured with the help of a state-backed turnaround fund after filing for bankruptcy in January, will slash international and domestic capacity by 40 percent and 30 percent respectively, compared to fiscal 2008, Agence France-Presse reported.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. continued its court battle Monday to claw back billions of dollars in assets from Barclays Plc, as two witnesses testified that the British bank wasn't supposed to see an immediate gain when it bought Lehman's core U.S. operation in 2008, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. A member of Lehman's board of directors and its former president testified that the deal hammered out following Lehman's historic bankruptcy filing called for Barclays to acquire a pool of assets and an equivalent amount of liabilities when it bought Lehman's broker-dealer unit.

Europe's hopes of containing Greece's credit crisis dimmed as the country's debt woes spread to Portugal, sparking a selloff in markets across the globe and testing the European Union's ability to protect its common currency, The Wall Street Journal reported. The euro tumbled to its lowest point in a year against the dollar after Standard & Poor's Ratings Services cut Portugal's credit rating two notches and downgraded Greece's debt to "junk" territory, a first for a euro-zone member. The move is bound to worsen Greece's already dire fiscal situation and hamper a recovery.

A Greek official said the International Monetary Fund is considering increasing its promised €15 billion ($19.76 billion) loans to Greece by between €5 billion and €10 billion, but expressed doubts about whether the boost will happen, The Wall Street Journal reported. “Everything is still very fluid. If our partners and creditors feel that more money is needed to finally calm the markets and stop hurting the euro, more money could be approved. It is being discussed among all parties involved," the official added, without elaborating. The IMF wasn't immediately available for comment.

A steep rise this year in the number of businesses at risk of going bust has fuelled fears that Britain faces a tougher year than expected with more insolvencies and higher unemployment than predicted by the government, The Guardian reported. The number of companies experiencing significant or critical financial distress rose by 14% in the first three months of the year to top 160,000, according to insolvency experts Begbies Traynor.

China's real estate rush, once confined to a handful of leading cities, has spilled into the hinterlands with a ferocity reminiscent of American expansion into exurbs like the Inland Empire, the Los Angeles Times reported. "The situation in Hefei is a symbol of the craziness in China's real estate market," said Cao Jianhai, a professor of economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank. "Prices in second- and third-tier cities are increasing more dramatically than in the first tier.

Debt-ridden Japan Airlines Corp (JAL) could miss its June-end deadline for submitting a rehabilitation plan by as much as two months as it deals with local governments opposed to flight cuts, the Nikkei said. The struggling airline's main lenders have said they will not recommence lending unless the company drastically revamps unprofitable flight operations in the restructuring plans to be drawn up by the end of June.

The Greek debt crisis is approaching a moment of truth. With short-term Portuguese, Spanish and Irish bonds falling sharply Monday, euro-zone policy makers are running out of time to stop the crisis engulfing other member states and threatening the euro area as a whole. To avoid contagion, three things must happen, The Wall Street Journal Heard on the Street blog reported: The Greek problem must be sealed off; countries need to flawlessly fulfill their deficit-reduction promises; and global growth needs to be buoyant. That's a tall order.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. continued its court battle Monday to claw back billions of dollars in assets from Barclays Plc, as two witnesses testified that the British bank wasn't supposed to see an immediate gain when it bought Lehman's core U.S. operation in 2008, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. A member of Lehman's board of directors and its former president testified that the deal hammered out following Lehman's historic bankruptcy filing called for Barclays to acquire a pool of assets and an equivalent amount of liabilities when it bought Lehman's broker-dealer unit.

Creditors of Daewoo Motor Sales Corp. have decided to let the vehicle sales and real estate development company go bankrupt, the main creditor, Korea Development Bank, said Monday. "The debt-rescheduling program for Daewoo Motor Sales may run aground due to the creditors' bankruptcy decision," a KDB official told Dow Jones. The company may be placed under a court receivership, said the official, who asked not to be identified. Daewoo Motor Sales said if it comes under the court protection, it is "the worst-case scenario" they can imagine.