Headlines

As many as one in five debt repayment plans are falling by the wayside, leaving thousands of Britons in danger of going bankrupt, The Guardian reported. Many individuals who have taken out an individual voluntary arrangement (IVA) to reduce their debt have been unable to stick to the repayments and now have a lapsed plan that threatens to tip their finances over the edge. If the IVA fails, the money spent on setting up the plan – which can be as much as £2,000 – then goes to the insolvency practitioner to meet their costs, leaving the borrower saddled with the original debt.

So far in the financial crisis, restructurings have proved surprisingly pragmatic affairs. But Yell's refinancing of £3.8 billion ($6.25 billion) of debt may be a sign of more fraught negotiations to come, The Wall Street Journal reported. Despite three deadline extensions and a threat by the directories group to go to the courts to enforce a solution if it doesn't get enough support, the deal still hangs by a slender thread: 1,000 creditors are in favor, but two still need to sign on to wrap the deal up.

At this time last year Jim Flynn and Nathan Berkley seemed to have it made. Their publishing house, Derwent Howard Media, looked to be thriving, with a string of successful specialist magazines led by flagship titles Official PlayStation Magazine, Ultimate Nintendo and Australian 360, The Australian reported. Just a year later it has all fallen apart. As of last week the company is in administration and faces being wound up. Berkley has moved to Spain and seemingly cut off all contact and a lot of people are concerned for their jobs, potentially out of pocket, and very confused.

An Ontario judge has approved a proposal by CanWest Global Communications Corp. to shift its flagship National Post newspaper to a subsidiary that contains the company's other newsprint assets, such as the Vancouver Sun and Ottawa Citizen, The Globe and Mail reported. In court documents filed this week, CanWest said it would have to close the newspaper if the asset shuffle weren't allowed since creditors at the parent company, which owns Global Television, didn't want to cover further financial losses at the paper.

Insolvencies in the first 10 months of the year are up 112 per cent over the same period last year, the Irish Times reported. There have been 1,208 insolvencies in the period to the end of October, according to the Kavanagh Fennell online insolvency publication, InsolvencyJournal.ie. Over the same period in 2008, 571 insolvencies were reported. The findings show that from January to October, construction was the most severely impacted sector as a result of the economic downturn with 362 insolvencies recorded.

Irish average national house prices are down 11.1% in first nine months of 2009 and prices are back to Christmas 2003 levels, according to data published today, Finfacts reported. Prices fell by 1.1% in September according to the latest edition of the Permanent tsb / ESRI House Price Index. This compares to reductions in August (-1.5%), July (-1.1%) and June 2009 (-1.5%). In the first nine months of 2009 national house prices have fallen by 11.1% which compares to a reduction of 7.0% in the same period in 2008.

The European competition commissioners, the British Government and the tripartite authorities, gave Lloyds permission to forge ahead with a fund-raising and restructuring independent of the Government Asset Protection Scheme (APS), Telegraph.co.uk reported.

The assets of Sigma Finance, a collapsed structured investment vehicle (SIV), are set to be shared equally amongst its creditors, after Britain's top court overturned a lower court ruling on Sigma's debt repayment, Reuters reported. The ruling is likely to have an impact on any UK financing scheme involving "waterfalls" of payments from one group of creditors to another, lawyers said.

GMAC-RFC Ltd., a U.K. unit of struggling U.S. financial services firm GMAC Financial Services Inc., has been hit with a £10.5 million ($17.2 million) charge for unfair treatment of homeowners who fell behind on mortgage payments, The Wall Street Journal reported. The firm Thursday was fined £2.8 million by the U.K. markets regulator and told it must spend about £7.7 million to compensate customers for excessive charges.

Japan set the stage for a huge bailout of Japan Airlines on Thursday, telling the struggling carrier to turn to a state-backed body for assistance, a move that ruled out a tougher stance by a new left-leaning government in Tokyo against the country’s powerful corporations, The New York Times reported. The government said JAL, Japan’s largest carrier by revenue, had been instructed to apply for funds from a state-backed turnaround body, after a special task force said saving the airline was “definitely possible” but would require a “substantial” injection of public money.