Headlines

India's Sterlite Industries and Mexican miner Grupo Mexico squared off in court on Monday and raised their respective bids for bankrupt U.S. copper miner Asarco LLC, which is seeking to end its four-year bankruptcy. Sterlite offered to raise the cash portion of its bid to $1.58 billion, up from $1.1 billion, said Asarco lawyer Jack Kinzie at the start of a court hearing in Texas on Monday. Including a note to creditors with a net present value of $83 million, Sterlite's new bid was worth $1.67 billion, Kinzie told the court.

CanWest Global Communications Corp. has initiated talks with the federal government on a potential change of ownership as the company and its creditors negotiate a financial restructuring of its vast media properties, The Globe and Mail reported. The company, which owns more than a dozen newspapers across the country, the Global Television network and several cable TV channels, has taken the first steps needed in Ottawa, signalling to federal regulators that discussions will be needed on a possible new ownership structure.

Dutch brokerage Van der Moolen Holding NV won creditor protection from a Dutch court on Monday, saying it had a "very weak" liquidity position and was considering asset sales and significant writedowns, Reuters reported. The move came less than a month after the company's chief executive resigned, leaving it without a management board. On July 17, Van der Moolen said its top priority would be raising capital amid further losses. The 117-year-old firm was once one of the most recognizable names on Wall Street as a top market maker on the New York Stock Exchange.

Bankers are calling for a new London panel to help smooth the restructuring of hundreds of billions of pounds of debt and prevent further ugly fights before courts between lenders, Reuters reported. The group, modelled on the Takeover Panel, would help prevent complex debt workouts being decided before courts, as the number of defaults soars. The restructuring panel would be most useful in cases where a minority of lenders are unreasonably holding out on the other lenders, said Andrew Speirs, managing director at London advisory firm Hawkpoint.

The German government on Monday rejected a report that its second stimulus package was failing to ignite Europe’s largest economy, Finfacts reported. Spokesman Klaus Vater said there was no indication that money was not being made available to stimulus projects around the country, as reported by the daily newspaper Die Welt. The newspaper had said in its Monday edition that only €200 million of €10 billion that the federal government had set aside to help promote growth had so far been tapped by the country’s 16 states.

Two ministries within the German government are coming up with competing proposals to expand financial regulator BaFin's powers, as party rivalry tints the government's attempts to avoid a repeat of the near-collapse of Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, The Wall Street Journal reported. With September's general election closing in, representatives from banks are cautioning that politicians shouldn't let a desire for publicity rush reforms as to when the government can seize a bank at risk of insolvency.

Iceland’s top financial regulator is preparing to hand over more cases of suspected market manipulation to a special prosecutor as the investigation into last year’s bank crash intensifies. Gunnar Andersen, director-general of the Financial Supervisory Authority, said his agency was convinced that “serious” manipulation had taken place and vowed to root out the perpetrators.

Belgian investment firm RHJ International plans to sweeten its bid for General Motors Co.'s European unit in an effort to overcome German government opposition to its bid, The Wall Street Journal reported. RHJ is developing a revised bid for GM's Opel/Vauxhall operations that would lower the amount of German taxpayer-funded loan guarantees required from €3.8 billion ($5.38 billion) to as little as €3.6 billion, people familiar with the matter said Friday. That would be €900 million below the amount of state aid envisioned in a rival offer from car-parts maker Magna International Inc.

The Canadian government repeatedly refused to help Nortel Networks over the past year as the telecom equipment maker fought to avoid filing for bankruptcy protection, a senior Nortel executive told a parliamentary committee on Friday, Reuters reported. "At the end of the day, the government chose not to provide any pre-filing support," Nortel Chief Strategy Officer George Riedel told the House of Commons industry committee. Riedel said Nortel had about a dozen different meetings with the federal government over the last year to ask for funding help for its various restructuring plans.

A group of 1,524 cattle ranchers said they would reject a debt-reduction plan by Brazilian beef processor Independencia to exit bankruptcy proceedings, Valor Economico reported Friday. Independencia, which filed for bankruptcy protection in early March, offered to cap debt payments to ranchers at 80,000 reais (US$43,550), Valor said. That makes up for an estimated 120 million reais in total payments for the ranchers. But they instead are demanding a total 330 million reais be paid as part of any renegotiation accord or will halt supplies to the company, Valor said.