Headlines

Guardian Trust now holds considerable sway over the fortunes (or otherwise) of investors in Hanover Finance after the company released details of a $102 million loss for the year to June 2009, The National Business Review reported. The accounts, finally made public this morning after a lengthy audit by KPMG, showed Hanover Finance made an operating loss of $283 million, compared to a reported profit of $16.3 million the previous year.

Mariella Burani Fashion Group SpA's board will meet Tuesday afternoon to seek ways to avoid filing for bankruptcy protection after the debt-laden company missed a Monday deadline to agree on a restructuring deal with its creditors banks, people with knowledge of the situation told Dow Jones Newswires. "It is unclear if there is a positive way out for Mariella Burani," one of the people said, adding that insolvency proceedings remain one of the possible options for the Italian fashion group.

Sterlite Industries (India) Ltd., India’s largest copper producer, rose to the highest price in a month in Mumbai as analysts said the company will save $2.5 billion having lost the bid to acquire bankrupt U.S. copper miner Asarco LLC, Bloomberg reported. Grupo Mexico SAB can regain control of its Tucson, Arizona- based unit Asarco, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, Texas ruled yesterday, rejecting a competing offer from Sterlite. Grupo Mexico and Sterlite each promised to spend more than $2.5 billion to guarantee that Asarco’s creditors are repaid in full.

Presenting a plan to return UBS to profitability, the chief executive of the battered Swiss bank said Tuesday that he expects the company to be earning nearly $15 billion a year no later than 2014, The New York Times reported. Switzerland’s largest bank plans to reach pretax profit of 15 billion Swiss francs, or $14.9 billion, and a return on equity — a measure of profitability — of 15 percent to 20 percent sometime between 2012 and 2014, it said in a statement ahead of a presentation to investors Tuesday.

The weak US dollar has claimed its latest victim: European aerospace and defence giant EADS reported a loss of €87 million ($130 million) in the third quarter of this year thanks to its strong position in the US dollar, Spiegel Online reported. The poor results reflected the challenging environment for the Airbus maker, in part because the company is paid dollars for the majority of aircraft it sells. EADS has also been plagued with production delays and cancelled or decreased orders. Two Airbus aircrafts, the A400M and the A380, have experienced costly production delays.

All cannot be well in the Austrian banking sector despite opposite announcements from the banks themselves, Seeking Alpha reported. Although Raiffeisen Zentralbank, Unicredit subsidiary Bank Austria and Erste Group reported operating profits in Q3 2009 only last week, the latest events from the past weekend suggest that Austria's banks, endangered by their failing ventures in Central and Eastern Europe, are far away from the financially stable positions they wish for themselves.

Directors at Kenmore Property Group, the developer that this week fell into the hands of administrators owing at least £700 million to Lloyds Banking Group, are planning a management buyout of parts of the group, the Times Online reported. Rob Brook, managing director of Kenmore, which was put into administration on Thursday with £1.8 billion of assets under management, is understood to be leading an attempt to wrest control of the asset management arm. Andrew White, head of the group’s Middle Eastern arm, is also said to be in talks to buy that division.

A Saad Group subsidiary says it is unable to make payments on a US$650 million (Dh2.38 billion) Islamic bond maturing in 2012, The National reported. Saad Trading, Contracting and Financial Services, part of the struggling family-owned conglomerate based in Saudi Arabia, said yesterday it was “impossible for the issuer to perform its payment obligations under the sukuk”. It made the disclosure in a statement to the Bahrain Stock Exchange, where the Golden Belt 1 sukuk is listed.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who put her political reputation on the line and said her government would dish out billions of euros to help a beleaguered Opel automaker stay in business, has lashed out at giant US carmaker General Motors, saying it would have to bear most of the cost of restructuring its troubled European Opel offshoot, after the giant American carmaker changed its about selling its German subsidiary, a decision that could cost 10,000 workers their jobs.

Senior members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet sent conflicting signals at the weekend over whether the government should provide aid to Opel, suggesting divisions within her government on the issue, Reuters reported. Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle said in an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that he expected Opel's U.S. parent General Motors to shoulder the full burden of a restructuring of Opel. He left the door open to regional aid for Opel from the four states where the carmaker has plants, but said he did not expect GM to come to Berlin for federal funds.