Headlines

A senior Chinese trade official warned that any further appreciation of the Chinese currency risked driving exporters out of business, underscoring the domestic political pressures on Beijing amid growing international calls for China to let the yuan rise, The Wall Street Journal reported. Vice Commerce Minister Zhong Shan, in an exclusive interview Thursday ahead of a visit to the U.S., said that the profit margin on many Chinese export goods was less than 2%.

Hong Kong bankruptcy petitions in February fell 54.9 percent from a year earlier, government data showed on Friday, indicating the economy is on course for a recovery, Reuters reported. Bankruptcy petitions were down 16.8 percent in February to the previous month, but monthly figures are not seasonally adjusted. Petitions totalled 677 in February, down from 1,500 a year earlier. Bankruptcies reached a six-year high of 1,872 in March 2009, as the economy was hit hard by the global financial crisis. It pulled out of recession in the second quarter.

UAE banks are likely to keep a tight lid on lending in coming years, even if the sector manages to avoid an immediate hit from the Dubai World debt restructuring, analysts say. The state-owned conglomerate, which is grappling with $26 billion in debt, is in the final stages of preparing a debt restructuring plan to put to its 97 creditors. Analysts have voiced concerns that domestic lending would dry up if banks are forced to take big losses on Dubai World-related debt.

A Manuwatu dairy farmer who was convicted for obstructing an animal welfare officer has had his company placed into receivership after apparently over-extending on debt, The National Business Review reported. PricewaterhouseCoopers partners Maurice Noone and John Fisk have been appointed as receivers of Robert McVitty’s company McVitty Properties and Patoka Dairies, in which McVitty Properties holds a majority stake. Mr Noone said the company appears to have over extended itself, and has not be able to secure the necessary funding to fund current operations and current debt levels.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, adopting a harsher tone toward Greece than the one expressed by some other European leaders, said Wednesday that Europe needed better rules to police its members, and she tacitly endorsed a proposal to eject wayward countries from the group of countries that use the euro, The New York Times reported. Speaking before a session of Parliament in Berlin, Mrs. Merkel referred to a proposal made last week by Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister.

Michel Barnier, the European commissioner in charge of financial market regulation, said he would propose controls to curb speculative trading in credit default swaps, (CDS) a form of debt insurance that has been blamed for worsening Greece's economic problems, Telegraph.co.uk reported. His measures will target so-called naked selling of CDS, where insurance contracts are sold to buyers who do not own the debt. The cost of CDS on Greece rocketed when fears grew that the country could default on its debt.

Greece should turn to the International Monetary Fund if it needs aid, the chief finance spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party said, in a reversal that signals a rift with European leaders Jean-Claude Trichet, Jean-Claude Juncker and Nicolas Sarkozy, Bloomberg reported. “We have to think about who has the instruments to push for Greece to restore its capital-markets access” if ultimately needed, Michael Meister, a lawmaker with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, said in an interview in Berlin.

Across Europe, from profligate Greece to newly strait-laced Ireland, countries are promising deep, painful cuts in public spending even as they face the likelihood of a new recession, The New York Times reported. To protect the value of the euro, satisfy investors and appease Europe’s economic taskmaster, Germany, the region’s most heavily indebted nations consider that they have no choice but to slim down. Reviving economic growth and reducing unemployment must wait until countries put their fiscal houses in better order, the thinking goes.

New Zealand’s Serious Fraud Office has confirmed today that it has launched an investigation into Capital+Merchant, more than two years after the firm went into receivership, The National Business Review reported. The investigation was started after a referral from Grant Thornton, the receivers of companies within the failed finance outfit’s group.

More than 100 workers have been stood down at Australia’s Paragon Printing for a 48-hour period as administrators look to secure "further financial support" for the ailing business. Hall Chadwick administrator Blair Pleash told ProPrint that the firm was currently in "negotiations with a principal customer to guarantee their support", since confirmed as former sister company Moore Business Solutions. Roughly two-thirds of Paragon's 145-strong workforce was stood down yesterday morning. The company is continuing to operate with a reduced workforce.