Headlines

A downturn in sales in recent months has forced DVD retailer EzyDVD into receivership, The Australian reported. The Adelaide-based company has 58 outlets across Australia including 26 company-owned stores and 32 franchised outlets. Only company-owned stores, which employ more than 200 staff, have been placed in receivership. Ferrier Hodgson partner David Kidman has been appointed receiver and manager of the company. As well as a sales slump, Mr Kidman said EzyDVD's financial difficulties stemmed from a significant debt burden and substantial operating losses in 2007 and 2008.

Technology company Infineon AG on Tuesday rejected an offer from the German state of Saxony to help it bailout its memory chip unit Qimonda AG, but said that it was open to further talks with the state government, the Associated Press reported. Officials from Saxony said earlier in the day that they were ready to provide Qimonda with €150 million ($207 million) in capital, as long as the parent company also came up with €150 million of its own cash to help the struggling unit. A condition of the state money would be that the company guarantees that Qimonda production remains in Dresden.

Shares of BNP Paribas plunged Wednesday after the French bank said extreme market volatility triggered steep losses in its investment banking operations over the last two months, the Associated Press reported. The bank said that as a result of the loss it is considering cutting its corporate and investment banking staff by 5 percent, about 800 jobs out of the unit's existing work force of 16,000. In a statement late Tuesday BNP Paribas said its investment banking division has lost €710 million ($972 million) over the first 11 months of the year.

Woodco Scotland Ltd has ceased trading while creditors wait to find out how much they can expect to recover from the firm, the John O’Groat Journal reported. Woodco, founded by husband-and-wife pair Bob and Sylvia Craine, supplied and erected environmentally-friendly log homes and other timber-framed buildings from its base in Wick. Last year the firm was among the first batch of companies to secure support from the North Highland Regeneration Fund (NHRF).

A collapse of the Detroit Three automakers would put nearly 600,000 Canadians out of work within five years, most of them in Ontario, as the impact ripples through the entire economy according to a report released Tuesday, the Calgary Herald reported. The study, commissioned by the Ontario Manufacturing Council, warned that a collapse of General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC would spread across the country, hitting creditors, suppliers, parts manufacturers and dealerships. The report came as the Canadian and U. S.

Official data showed on Wednesday that the number of Britons out of work and claiming benefit rose for a tenth consecutive month in November and by the largest amount since March 1991, the International Herald Tribune reported. The leap of 75,700 on the month was much more than expected and took the total number on jobless benefit to 1.072 million, surpassing the psychologically-important one million mark for the first time since 2001. The figures will give added urgency to the political debate over how to handle Britain's recession.

A German bank has struck a deal with bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. regarding the exercise and liquidation of currency options contracts nominally worth €139 million, Bankruptcy Law360 reported. According to Judge James M. Peck's order Monday in the the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, if Deutsche Zentral-Genossenschaftsbank AG exercises a currency option, the transaction will be deemed liquidated at the current market value.

Nortel Networks Corp. has $2.6 billion in cash and no debt to pay until 2011, conditions that would seem to take the Canadian maker of telecommunications equipment easily through even a rough 2009. So why is it contemplating bankruptcy? Nikos Theodosopoulos, an analyst with UBS Securities LLC, believes a major factor pressing the company to consider filing early is the limited availability of debtor-in-possession financing. The credit crunch has largely frozen the DIP market over the past few months, lenders and bankruptcy experts say.

Bernard L. Madoff built a vast base of European clients through multilayered chains of borrowers and investors that allowed his firm's alleged fraud to remain hidden for years there, people familiar with the matter say, The Wall Street Journal reported. As European banks, funds and individuals are set to lose billions from the collapse of Mr. Madoff's empire, a pattern is emerging among those who got burned. Contacts with wealthy new clients were often made within social networks by word of mouth.

For years, the overseas operations of Ford and General Motors helped buoy Detroit when times were tough in the United States. But now, with the administration of President George W. Bush announcing Friday that it would step in to keep General Motors from falling into bankruptcy, and with Ford in serious trouble as well, fears are growing that the U.S. problems of the automakers will drag down their more successful units in Europe, Asia and Latin America, the International Herald Tribune reported.