Headlines

A sukuk default by Kuwait's Investment Dar and debt restructuring at Saudi conglomerates have shaken confidence in the $1 trillion Islamic finance industry, fanning debate about investors' protection and investors' rights, Reuters reported. Billed as safer than traditional banking due to requirements for assets to underpin deals, Islamic bond holders worry they may not have any more legal safeguards than conventional counterparts in case of default, or perhaps even less, partly due to the untested nature of the process.

The crisis in international educational has spread with the sudden collapse of four colleges in Melbourne and Sydney, leaving 2000 students stranded, The Age reported. Foreign students studying for VCE exams in Melbourne were among those caught out when a company that owns the four private colleges went into voluntary administration yesterday. Victorian education officials rushed to ''secure'' the exam papers of 19 VCE students, and a new venue was last night being hastily arranged for them to sit their exams from Monday.

Storm Financial co-founders Emmanuel and Julie Cassimatis seemed to be suffering from a bout of absent mindedness in the final days of hearings into the company’s collapse, Money Management reported. Media reports have detailed how Mr Cassimatis declared nearly 50 times that he could not recall details of a meeting with insolvency specialist Ivor Worrell in mid to late December 2008, when the company was on the brink of collapse.

The Bank of England will expand its programme of money creation by £25 billion over the next three months to boost Britain's recession-hit economy, Threadneedle Street announced today as it left interest rates unchanged again, The Guardian reported. Warning that UK banks are still failing to provide enough credit to businesses and households, the Bank said it would increase the size of quantitative easing (QE) to £200 billion. The Bank's nine-strong monetary policy committee also pegged bank rate at its record low level of 0.5%, where it has been since March.

U.S. carmaker General Motors' decision to keep its European unit Opel will benefit European taxpayers, especially in Britain, Germany and Spain, British Business Secretary Peter Mandelson said on Thursday, Reuters reported. He said he believed workers at GM's Vauxhall unit in Britain would prefer to keep the same management rather than have new owners, but gave no details of how the restructuring of the company would be financed.

General Motors Co. executives, rushing to update a restructuring plan for Opel and Vauxhall, are confident they can still win financial backing from Germany despite the rift created when the company's board abruptly abandoned a plan to sell control of the European divisions, The Wall Street Journal reported. John Smith, GM's lead restructuring executive for Opel, said in a conference call Tuesday that the car maker plans to review a new plan "very soon" and then present it to European governments and labor unions.

Sweden's debt office is set to give Saab Automobile the green light for state guarantees for a €400 million euro ($594 million) loan from the European Investment Bank, a Swedish news agency reported. Last month, the EIB granted the loan, a key component in the planned sale of Saab by its parent General Motors to tiny luxury sportscar maker Koenigsegg. But the Swedish state must step in with a guarantee if the funds are to be paid out.

Germany, second only to China as the world's leading exporter of goods, has been particularly hard-hit by the collapse of global markets. But the mass unemployment some had feared has failed to materialize. Labor experts in many countries are wondering how Germany has done it, Spiegel Online reported. Germany currently has 1.1 million workers participating in short-time working programs, known in German as Kurzarbeit. They include people who don't have enough work, but who also are nevertheless not being let go.

New Zealand’s unemployment rate rose to a nine-year high of 6.5 percent in the September quarter, from 6 percent in the previous three months, The National Business Review reported. The number of people unemployed reached its highest level in 15 years, rising 12,000 or 9 percent during the September quarter to reach 150,000. The rise in the unemployment rate was slightly above expectations, with the median forecast in a Reuters poll of economists having been for a rise to 6.4 percent.

General Motors Co.’s Opel division employees will demand a bigger role in company decisions now that the carmaker has dropped a plan to sell the European manufacturer, the unit’s top labor leader said. Workers want GM to convert Adam Opel GmbH into a joint- stock company to increase their power, Klaus Franz, head of Opel’s works council, said today at a rally at the division’s headquarters in Ruesselsheim, Germany. Magna International Inc., the Canadian company that tried to buy Opel, would have given workers a 10 percent stake.