Headlines

The trend by banks in Australia to wind up small businesses that have fallen behind is likely to take off in New Zealand, a business turnaround specialist says, BusinessDay.co.nz reported. Trevor Thornton, of accounting firm Grant Thornton New Zealand, said Australian banks were starting to stop supporting small businesses "nursed for a couple of years", but now late with their repayments. "It would seem only a matter of time before banks on this side of the Tasman start to lose patience with companies that have not been able to effectively rehabilitate themselves," Mr Thornton said.

A bankruptcy court judge on Friday approved Lyondell Chemical Co's plan to exit bankruptcy, signaling the near-end of a 15-month process during which the chemical maker fended off a takeover and settled hundreds of environmental claims and a creditor lawsuit, Reuters reported. Judge Robert Gerber gave his assent to a plan in which Apollo Management, Ares Management and Access Industries will provide financing. Lyondell filed for bankruptcy in January of 2009 under the weight of about $24 billion in debt.

European buyout firm Triton offered to acquire insolvent German department store chain Karstadt in its entirety, submitting the one and only bid to the court-appointed administrator by the Friday deadline, Reuters reported. Triton said it presented a strategic concept to continue operating the chain as a going concern, but warned it would need Karstadt's lessors and its staff to make more sacrifices before the acquisition plans could proceed.

Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission said Friday it extended the receivership of Kuo Hua Life Insurance Co. by another nine months to allow investors to bid for the firm, Taiwan's first life insurance company to be taken into receivership by the government for more than 40 years, Nasdaq.com reported on a Dow Jones story. The receivership period was to end May 3. The Financial Supervisory Commission took over Kuo Hua Life Aug. 4, 2009, because it had more debt than assets, and handed it over to the Taiwan Insurance Guarantee Fund, which is funded by a tax from industry premiums.

Sinking under the weight of its own debt and shunned by international investors, Greece on Friday asked fellow euro-zone members and the International Monetary Fund to bail it out, a humbling step that reshapes the rules of the currency union and, for Greece, augurs years of economic pain, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s bankruptcy estate sued three arms of Japanese investment bank Nomura Holdings Inc. in an attempt to wipe out more than $1 billion of claims related to derivatives contracts, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Lehman filed legal complaints Friday against Nomura International PLC in London, Nomura Global Financial Products in New York and Nomura Securities Co. Ltd. in Tokyo, seeking to invalidate large claims the companies made against the investment bank after it had filed for bankruptcy. In each complaint, filed in the U.S.

Ireland’s Revenue Commissioners wrote off almost €222 million in business taxes last year, mostly because companies became insolvent or ceased trading, The Irish Times reported. Issuing the authority's annual report today, chairman Josephine Feehily said Revenue had identified problems linked to a further €195 million in business tax and has entered into special instalment arrangements for repayment in 14,100 cases. She warned however that Revenue's focus remains on "timely compliance and payment of tax".

Ireland had the biggest fiscal deficit in the European Union last year – larger than both Greece and the UK - according to revised figures published on Thursday by Eurostat, the European Commission’s official statistics office, the Financial Times reported. The deficit was revised up from 11.8 per cent to 14.3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product after Eurostat ruled that the Irish government’s €4bn of aid to Anglo Irish Bank must be treated as part of current spending.

The decision to file for bankruptcy was not his, the president of language-school chain Geos Corp., Tsuneo Kusunoki, implied in an unusual statement released Thursday, the Japan Times reported. A Geos lawyer explained that because "three directors could not reach agreement" on the bankruptcy filing, the action was not taken by the board of directors but rather by some executives. The lawyer stressed that the process is legal.

Receivers appointed to troubled Launceston timber company Forest Enterprises Australia are yet to decide on the need for more redundancies, The Examiner reported. After concerns from staff that former chief executive Andrew White had received a lucrative redundancy payout, a spokeswoman for receiver manager Tim Norman, of Deloitte, yesterday denied that was the case.