Headlines

Italian authorities have seized 19 art works belonging to Calisto Tanzi, founder of the Italian dairy company Parmalat, which collapsed in 2003, The New York Times reported on a BBC News story. Last week Mr. Tanzi, who was convicted of market rigging and other charges stemming from the company’s bankruptcy, denied owning paintings and drawings by Picasso, Degas and van Gogh, among others, part of a collection estimated at more than $150 million.

Aidan Birkett, the man charged with sorting out Dubai World's $26 billion debt pile, could face an uphill struggle to restructure the company that's at the heart of the emirate's financial crisis, Dow Jones reported. Birkett, 56, managing director of Deloitte's corporate finance department, was parachuted in last month as chief restructuring officer of Dubai World. He has little time to work his magic, with creditors already baying for blood as the maturity of a $3.52 billion sukuk, or Islamic bond, issued by Dubai World's real-estate unit Nakheel approaches on Dec. 14.

The Department of Finance has published its estimates of income and expenditure for next year and it projects a rise in current spending of €5 billion, without taking account of planned changes on Wednesday. The Department says that besides the rise in unemployment benefit payments, interest payments on the national debt will increase by €2 billion from €2.6 billion in 2009 to €4.6 billion in 2010.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc are failing to meeting lending targets after the U.K. Treasury spent 117 billion pounds ($283 billion) rescuing the banking industry, the National Audit Office said. The public spending watchdog said in a report that the two banks have received 76 billion pounds from the government and that the government can do little to force them to lend more to companies, Bloomberg reported. They have met goals to increase mortgage loans.

The amount spent on first-class rail travel by the UK Government's Insolvency Service has more than trebled over the past two years, Telegraph.co.uk reported. The figures emerged as the Chancellor faces intense pressure to outline in his pre-Budget report on Wednesday exactly how he plans to reduce Britain's bulging deficit, which is expected to climb to about £180 billion this year. John Penrose, the shadow business minister, said: "We're in the longest recession since records began and 51 of our businesses are going bust every single day.

Gold’s rally to a record may be related to investors seeking to protect themselves from a government defaulting on its debt rather than inflation, according to economists at Fathom Financial Consulting, Bloomberg reported. Gold’s advance of about 35 percent this year suggests the metal may be in a “micro-bubble” even though it’s hard to argue that there is a generalized asset bubble forming in the world economy, the London-based consultancy said.

The ruler of this city-state, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, became renowned as a developer-king, an autocratic visionary determined to build a 21st-century Xanadu in the desert despite a legion of critics who said it could not be done. That vision took a beating last week after Dubai, struggling under $80 billion in debt, suddenly asked to delay interest payments for its flagship company, Dubai World, sending markets tumbling around the world, The New York Times reported.

General Motors Co. may do without job cuts at Adam Opel GmbH's technical development center in Ruesselsheim, Nick Reilly, Opel's interim chief, said Friday, according to a participant of a workers' meeting where Reilly was speaking, Dow Jones reported. Opel's top labor representative Klaus Franz said last week that according to GM's original restructuring plan around 550 jobs could be lost at the center. GM hasn't made any detailed statements about a planned head count reduction at specific Opel plants.

The heads of Germany's regional banks are meeting late Monday in Frankfurt upon request of state-controlled bank WestLB AG, German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports in a pre-release Monday. WestLB's majority owners are threatening to let the Duesseldorf-based bank become insolvent, the newspaper says, citing financial sources. WestLB and the German savings-bank association for the Rhineland, known as RSGV, declined to comment on the report but Dow Jones Newswires was told that WestLB is in talks with its owners and Germany's bank rescue fund SoFFin to find a solution before Nov.

Rusal, the largest aluminum producer in the world, which is struggling under $16.7 billion in debt, has agreed with about 70 banks to restructure its loans and begin repayments when earnings improve, the company said Thursday, The New York Times/em> reported. The deal, apparently on lenient terms for Rusal and its owner, the Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska, also clears the way for Rusal to take the next step back from the brink of bankruptcy: selling 10 percent of the company in an initial public offering this month.