Headlines

New Zealand-born workers in Australia are among the worst hit by job losses as the global financial crisis bites, new research shows. Research published in The Australian newspaper said the number of New Zealanders employed in Australia's workforce had dropped by 20,800 to 304,100 in the year to May. Full-time New Zealand-born workers across the Tasman dropped by 11,000 to 236,700, while part-time workers dropped by 9800 to 67,400. It increased the rate of unemployed New Zealanders in Australia to 7 percent, up 2.8 percent in the year to May.

The troubles of the managed investment scheme industry have forced Australian Bight Abalone - the nation's largest offshore abalone farmer - into voluntary administration, Adelaide Now reported. The news comes as analyst Adviser Edge calculated that MIS companies had raised $340 million in 2008-09, down from $1.1 billion the previous year. Adelaide-based Australian Bight Abalone has 1400 investors with $42 million invested in abalone farms across five 20-hectare lease sites.

India’s Economic Survey today prescribed a new bankruptcy law for ensuring speedy disposal of insolvency petitions, the Business Standard reported on a Press Trust of India story. At present, the country does not have any separate bankruptcy law. But, the provisions of bankruptcy are included in the Companies Act, 1956.

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics have become a bargaining chip at Air Canada as the country's largest airline tries to overcome labour strife and avoid filing for bankruptcy protection, The Globe and Mail reported. Air Canada mechanics and technical staff, worried about losing their jobs to El Salvador, narrowly voted down a tentative 21-month labour pact that had been recommended by union negotiators, throwing the cash-strapped carrier's recovery strategy into jeopardy.

China's Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. plans to present a detailed bid for General Motors Corp.'s Opel unit in Europe within the next few days, a person familiar with the matter said Wednesday, a move that could complicate the U.S. auto maker's effort to sell Opel to Canadian supplier Magna International Inc., The Wall Street Journal reported. In May, GM signed a memorandum of understanding to sell a majority stake in Opel and its U.K. sister brand, Vauxhall, to Magna, whose bid is backed by Russia's Sberbank Rossia and auto maker OAO GAZ Group.

Vietnam boasts one of the developing world's most resilient economies this year, but economists fear the success masks serious problems, as loose state-directed lending risks pushing Vietnam into a new speculative bubble, The Wall Street Journal reported. Those concerns were highlighted Tuesday, when Fitch Ratings downgraded Vietnam's local currency rating, citing "a steady deterioration in the country's fiscal position" and a banking system that's "vulnerable to potential systemic stress" as the government floods the economy with credit. Similar worries affect the U.S.

The International Monetary Fund approved plans on Wednesday to issue its own debt to strengthen its capacity to fund bail-outs, the Financial Times reported. Meanwhile, the World Bank said it committed a record $59 billion in loans and guarantees to developing countries in the year to June 30.

Irish prime minister Brian Cowen on Wednesday forecast that the number of dole claimants will rise to 500,000 by Christmas and grow further into 2010. It's clear, given the expected international backdrop of years of slow growth, that Irish unemployment will remain elevated for an extended period, Finfacts reported. The Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment said on Wednesday that 6,813 redundancies were recorded in June, up almost 134% from the same month last year.

The European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch, said Thursday that it would release badly needed funds to Latvia to help the struggling Baltic nation head off a collapse of its economy and maintain its currency link to the euro, The New York Times reported. The commission said in Brussels that it would release €1.2 billion ($1.7 billion), the second installment of a 7.5 billion euro financing package that the country secured in December with the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and other international lenders.

Insolvent German retailer Arcandor AG's mail-order retail unit, Quelle GmbH, was handed a lifeline by federal and state governments Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported. Quelle was given a €50 million ($70.4 million) state-aid loan late Monday called "Massekredit" that has to be paid back by Dec. 31. A "Massekredit" is a special loan that can be granted to insolvent companies. Preliminary insolvency administrator Klaus Hubert Goerg said the loan would allow Quelle to reorganize and refocus on its everyday business.