Headlines

The European Commission Friday said it has extended its in-depth probe into the restructuring of German lender Hypo Real Estate due to some new measures planned by the German government, Dow Jones reported. Meanwhile the commission said it has temporarily cleared a €6 billion capital injection into the lender, until a final decision on the restructuring plan is reached. "In order to cover the additional restructuring measures for Hypo Real Estate, the Commission has extended its in-depth investigation.

Kenmore, the property group which is reported to owe Lloyds bank around £700 million, has placed 21 of its companies into administration and a further two into receivership, accountants Grant Thornton said, Telegraph.co.uk reported. The Edinburgh-based company is a co-investing, trading and development property group with investments in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. It manages in excess of £1 billion of investments and has a development pipeline of £1.5 billion.

Nortel Networks Corp., on the eve of finalizing an $1.13 billion sale of certain wireless assets to Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, won bankruptcy court approval on Thursday to have the funds held in an escrow account with JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, Bankruptcy Law360 reported. Read more. (Subscription required.)

State-controlled German bank WestLB said Thursday it would sell €85 billion ($127.35 billion) in assets from its balance sheet in a move that effectively creates Germany's first so-called "bad bank," The Wall Street Journal reported. The portfolio will include healthy as well as "toxic" paper and other assets, WestLB said. It is unclear to what extent WestLB's owners and Germany's financial-market stabilization fund, or SoFFin, will be responsible for the pooled assets.

Germany has told General Motors it will have to come up with the money to refinance Opel, after the US carmaker cancelled the sale of its European arm, the BBC reported. Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle told GM executives that they had to be responsible for restructuring the unit. Germany had previously offered €4.5 billion ($6.7 billion ; £4.1 billion) to support Opel and protect German jobs if the company was sold to car parts maker Magna. On cancelling the sale last week, GM said it would still seek state aid.

The chief executive of US automaker General Motors has apologised and expressed "deep regret" for the company's handling of a sale of its subsidiary Opel to Canadian manufacturer Magna and Russian investment bank Sberbank, a deal that was aborted last week, the Press Trust of India reported. GM CEO Fritz Henderson expressed his "deep regret" for shocking the nation and provoking outrage among government leaders, trade unions and Opel workers by making an unexpected announcement last week to cancel the deal and instead to keep Germany's second largest car manufacturer under its fold.

The bid by the German government to secure Opel's rescue has ended in fiasco after General Motors pulled out of a deal to sell its troubled European subsidiary, Spiegel Online reported. A German chancellor has rarely been given such short shrift by the chief executive of an industrial corporation. Merkel and half the German cabinet had spent more than a year in negotiations with the US company so that GM's German subsidiary, Opel, could be sold to a consortium of investors headed by the Canadian-Austrian automotive supplier Magna and the Russian Sberbank.

A Brisbane-based civil engineering and construction firm with more than 200 employees has gone into voluntary administration, the Brisbane Times reported. Civdec Constructions Pty Ltd, which is based in Acacia Ridge but also has offices in Townsville, Airlie Beach and Mackay, told its workers the grim news yesterday. The company recently handled a project near the international terminal at the Brisbane Airport to cater for A380 aircraft. SV Partners is handling the administration, but a spokesperson was unavailable to comment this morning. The prospects for employees are unclear.

The U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading Thursday said that it will look into whether the structure of the corporate insolvency market has any features that could result in unfair practices for certain creditors and firms, Dow Jones reported. The agency said the study follows concerns raised within the government and the industry, after a World Bank report showed costs of closing a business in the U.K. are higher than in other countries with similar or better recovery rates.

Debt-laden Australian asset manager Babcock & Brown Infrastructure urged investors to approve a $1.6 billion rescue plan backed by Canada's Brookfield group, saying no rival plan from Royal Bank of Scotland was on the table, Reuters reported. RBS was putting together an A$1.5 billion ($1.4 billion) counterproposal which it planned to submit if the Brookfield plan was voted down, the Australian Financial Review reported on Thursday, citing an unnamed RBS source.