Headlines

In his first public speech, Ireland’s new head of financial regulation, Matthew Elderfield, has outlined plans to adopt a much tougher approach to the supervision of the banking and financial sector, The Irish Times reported. There needed to be “assertive risk-based regulation underpinned by a credible threat of enforcement”, said Mr Elderfield, but he warned that this would require substantially increased resources and more stringent powers.

Employees of the failed Queensland meat group, Leitch Pastoral, should get their entitlements, ABC Rural reported. Leitch Pastoral, which ran the Killarney Abattoir, Pittsworth food processors and Condamine River Meats in Southern Queensland, recently went into voluntary administration and 230 workers were stood down. Australian Meat Employees Union industrial officer Chris Newman says the debt hasn't been finalised, but a creditors meeting yesterday was told workers would get some payment. "The amount of debt owed by these companies will be enough to cover employee entitlements," he says.

The sale of Canada's largest English-language daily newspaper chain has attracted some of the country's financial heavyweights as potential suitors, the Financial Post reported. Among the shortlist of bidders for Canwest Limited Partnership, the newspaper division of Winnipeg-based Canwest Global Communications Corp., are Alberta Investment Management Corp.

A bankruptcy judge in New York has approved the auction sale of a Chrysler plant in northeast Ohio to a Canadian liquidator that sells surplus industrial equipment, CanadianBusiness.com reported. Maynards Industries Ltd. of Vancouver bid $45.5 million for the Twinsburg stamping plant southeast of Cleveland. Judge Arthur Gonzalez approved the deal Thursday. About 1,000 people worked at the plant when Chrysler announced shutdown plans last year, but retirements and buyouts have trimmed the work force. The factory takes steel sheets and presses them into door panels and other parts.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which holds an economic majority stake in Canwest Global Communications Corp.’s specialty television business, sought the annulment of Canwest’s sale to Shaw Communications Inc., Bloomberg reported. Goldman today asked the Court of Appeal for Ontario, the province’s highest court, to set aside a Feb. 19 judge’s approval of the sale of a stake in Canwest to Shaw. for C$95 million ($92.7 million) and order the company’s directors to consider alternative proposals.

Sydney-based structured finance and investment company Securities International Limited has been placed in voluntary administration after collapsing with debts of $2-3 million. Martin Green, partner at insolvency firm BRI Ferrier, says SIL is an unlisted public company with about 260 shareholders, SmartCompany.com.au reported. He says chief executive Stephen Duncan has been trying to trade the company out of difficulty and had asked shareholders to inject more capital into the business in recent months.

Chinese real estate prices accelerated last month, rising by their fastest pace in two years despite government efforts to cool the market amid fears of a looming property bubble, the Financial Times reported. Prices of commercial and residential property in China’s 70 largest cities rose by 10.7 per cent in February from the same period a year earlier, a marked increase from the 9.5 per cent year-on-year gain in January, according to China’s statistics bureau.

U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown reiterated that he won't be using the upcoming budget to accelerate his government's debt-reduction plan, a controversial topic that has split economists and other experts, The Wall Street Journal reported. Some business organizations, credit-rating agencies and the Bank of England have called for faster cuts to Britain's record deficit, while many economists agree with Mr. Brown that cuts that are too aggressive could derail the country's fragile recovery. Confirming the budget will take place on March 24, Mr.

Irish resident entities had issued almost €1.1 trillion in debt securities by the end of January 2010, new figures from the Central Bank showed today, The Irish Times reported. The debt, which includes that of companies and institutions, was made up of €790 billion in euro denominated securities, with €276 billion in foreign denominated securities. The bulk of the debt was down to companies involved in securitisation, asset finance companies and treasuries, mainly located in the IFSC, which accounted for €789.1 billion.

European politicians and regulators could initiate a continent-wide ban on speculative trading of sovereign credit-default swaps tomorrow. Making it stick without the Americans won’t work, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. New York and London dominate swaps trading, and both have resisted greater regulation. Last year, U.S. regulators and Congress rejected a proposed ban on buying credit-default swaps without owning the underlying debt. Adair Turner, chairman of the U.K.