Headlines

Corus Entertainment Inc. is possibly interested in buying some specialty channels from Canwest Global Communications Ltd., but not other parts of its media business, Corus CEO John Cassaday said Wednesday. Corus operates a broad array specialty cable channels, including YTV, Treehouse, W Network, and Cosmopolitan TV, as well as Movie Central and HBO Canada in western Canada, The Canadian Press reported.

Administrators of Griffin Coal are investigating whether the coal miner was trading while insolvent and say that creditor claims so far total about $1 billion, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Griffin Coal was placed in administration on January 4 after missing deadlines for the payment of debt instalments and tax liabilities. The possibility that the company could have been trading while insolvent was raised by a creditor during question time, who claimed Griffin Coal had not paid a November invoice but continued to rack up debts.

Auto makers are bracing for a brutal 2010 in Europe, as economic troubles and the end of government scrappage programs threaten to drag down sales, The Wall Street Journal reported. High unemployment and the inability of many consumers to access credit are keeping customers out of showrooms. At the same time, sales are likely to be further depressed in the absence of government incentive programs that last year encouraged consumers to trade in old vehicles for new ones.

Eastern Hi Fi Group Limited has been placed in receivership, TVNZ reported. The directors of the company say in a statement to the NZX they see no alternative but to ask ASB Bank as first charge holder over the assets of the group to appoint receivers. They say the company reduced its operating expenses during the past year but has not been able to rid itself of leases of unused and slightly used premises which are now redundant in the company's hands and cause unprofitable trading.

When Nortel Networks Corp. sought court protection from its creditors last January, its chief executive officer, Mike Zafirovski, promised creditors and employees that the telecommunications company would stanch its debt wounds and re-emerge in fighting form, The Globe and Mail reported in an analysis. But the pledge, like Mr. Zafirovski, was gone by summer.

Shares in Japan Airlines plummeted 81% today to just ¥7 amid strong indications that the firm will file for bankruptcy and have its shares delisted as early as next week, The Guardian reported. Asia's biggest airline is expected to submit itself to a government-led rehabilitation package that will include a complete reduction of its capital. Investors, whose shares were each worth ¥213 at the beginning of last year, will see the value of their investment wiped out.

Raffaella Prestinoni's sweaters business in Varese used to be one of the millions of family-run companies anchoring the European economy. Today, companies such as hers threaten to dent the Continent's recovery, The Wall Street Journal reported. Heavily dependent upon hard-to-get bank loans and shut out of Europe's embryonic corporate-bond market, small and medium businesses here have been hit hard. The result: widespread insolvencies, job losses and a cloud over Europe's growth prospects in 2010. As important as small businesses are to the U.S.

Greece was condemned by the European Commission on Tuesday for falsifying data about its public finances and allowing political pressures to obstruct the collection of accurate statistics, the Financial Times reported. In a damning report published as the eurozone grapples with its worst financial crisis since the euro’s launch in 1999, the Commission said figures from Greece’s were so unreliable that its budget deficit and public debt might be even higher than government had claimed last October.

he Dutch Finance Ministry is not involved in renegotiation talks with the government of Iceland over its debts related to the collapse of online bank Icesave, a spokeswoman for the ministry said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Iceland plans to hold a referendum in the next two months on terms for paying back Britain and the Netherlands more than $5 billion for money lost in high-interest Icesave bank accounts during a financial meltdown in 2008. The two countries compensated savers in full and want their money back.

China backed off its giant stimulus effort Tuesday by reducing the amount of cash banks have available to lend, in the clearest signal yet that the government is worried that the nation's credit binge now risks igniting inflation, The Wall Street Journal reported. China's stimulus program, led by a government order to banks in late 2008 to flood the economy with cash, helped to carry China through global financial turmoil. The economy is now poised to surge past Japan this year as the world's second-largest economy after the U.S.