Headlines

The firm that owns English Championship soccer club Watford said on Monday it will run out of cash before Christmas if it does not secure further funding, Reuters reported. AIM-listed Watford Leisure said that in addition to outstanding loans of 4.9 million pounds ($8.03 million), mainly from Valley Grown Salads, which are secured against the Vicarage Road Stadium it needs a further 5.5 million pounds to cover projected requirements to end-June 2010. Shares in Watford Leisure were down 32.5 percent at 6.75 at 0957 GMT, valuing the business at about 3 million pounds.

Japan passed into law Monday a conditional moratorium on loan repayments by small businesses and home owners, a move that opponents say may lead to an increase in bad loans on the books of the country's banks, The Wall Street Journal reported. The bill, which has been in the works since the Democratic Party of Japan came to power in September, was passed by the upper house of Japan's parliament on Monday, according to a spokesman at the Japanese banking regulator the Financial Services Agency.

Hanover Finance chairman David Henry says Allied Farmers' audacious $400 million bid for the troubled lender's loan book is in the best interests of all classes of investors, BusinessDay reported. Despite intense speculation last week, Mr Henry said there had been no rival or counter offer to that made by the NZX-listed finance and rural services company. Hanover's independent directors have unanimously recommended that secured and unsecured investors back the deal when asked to vote on the matter at a special meeting in Auckland on December 16.

Officials with General Motors Co.'s Saab unit said the brand has received serious expressions of interest from potential buyers since Tuesday's collapse of a deal to sell the Swedish car maker to Koenigsegg Group AB. Saab Automobile AB officials are now racing to build a case for GM's board of directors and its chief executive to keep Saab alive, a spokesman said. "We've had intense dialogue with potential buyers," Eric Geers, a Saab spokesman, said Friday.

The United Arab Emirates central bank on Sunday said that it stood behind domestic and foreign banks operating in Dubai after last week’s announcement that Dubai World needed more time to pay back some of its $60 billion in debt, The New York Times reported. Dubai surprised the financial world on Wednesday when it said it would ask creditors of Dubai World, the conglomerate behind its rapid expansion, to agree to a six-month standstill on the debt. Global markets sank on the news.

Banks who lent over $30 billion to Dubai World, the debt-laden state investment group, plan to appoint auditors KPMG to represent them in talks over recovering their money, the Independent on Sunday newspaper reported. The banks include HSBC, Britain's biggest bank, as well as Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group, and Standard Chartered, the paper said without citing sources. KPMG will be formally appointed once the creditor banks have created a steering committee comprising five or six of the main lenders to lead the negotiations, it added.

Another 2,140 workers at First Quench Retailing, the group behind British off-license chains Threshers and Wine Rack, are losing their jobs after the administrator said it would close 391 more stores by Dec. 20, Reuters reported. Administrator KPMG has already announced the closure of 754 stores with the loss of over 3,600 jobs. It said on Friday it had sold 13 stores and the Wine Rack brand to Venus Wine & Spirits Merchants, sold eight stores to SEP Properties and was still in talks regarding the sale of another 100 stores.

A heavy debt load and a poor ski season a few years ago has forced Manning Park Resort, a summer and winter wonderland in the heart of the Cascade Mountains, into receivership, The Vancouver Sun reported. But with current snow conditions that can only be described as great, it will be business as usual or even better, this year. The only difference? The family-run resort will now be run under the control of the Bowra Group as receiver/manager.

The 40,000 embattled "grower investors" in timber schemes managed by the defunct Great Southern group will now probably have to wait until January or even later to get a clear resolution of their dilemma of which of four options to go ahead with: three potential replacement scheme managers or a wind-up, The Australian reported.

Deutsche Bank AG and a BNP Paribas unit sued Bank of America NA on Wednesday over allegations the bank failed to pay back $1.73 billion in secured notes, The Associated Press reported. The two sued for breach of contract. Deutsche Bank said Bank of America failed to secure $1.25 billion in cash and mortgage loans on its behalf. BNP Paribas said the bank was supposed to hold cash and mortgage loans to secure $480.7 million in outstanding notes. The notes were issued by a special-purpose entity, Ocala Funding LLC, which provided short-term loans to Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp.