Headlines

Nokia Oyj, the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, plans to cut 1,700 jobs in sales, marketing and some technology functions to adapt to falling consumer demand, Bloomberg reported. The company, based in Espoo, Finland, will start consultations with unions about the cutbacks, which are part of previously announced plans to adjust to a shrinking market, Nokia said in a statement today. Of the cuts, about 700 will be in Finland, spokeswoman Eija-Riitta Huovinen said. Nokia said Jan.

The Bank of Japan said it may buy subordinated loans from banks for the first time to revive lending and replenish capital depleted by falling stock prices, Bloomberg reported. The central bank is considering the purchase of up to 1 trillion yen ($10 billion) of the debt in an “exceptional” step, it said in a statement in Tokyo today. The bank concludes a two-day policy meeting tomorrow.

Investor activism will continue behind the scenes after Babcock & Brown was placed in administration, a spokesman for the ActionBBSN investor group says. Spokesman David Gibson says major institutional noteholders will now lead the way, as administrators Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu take the helm at Babcock & Brown, The National Business Review reported. Previously retail investors have been stirring up comment on online forums, with the ActionBBSN email group urging noteholders to reject the company’s restructure proposal.

When economic crisis struck Asia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, international law firms with newly crippled clients in the region flew in their top restructuring specialists from the United States and Europe. This time around, though, those lawyers are much in demand at home, leaving Asian offices somewhat strapped for bankruptcy lawyers, The AmLaw Daily reported. With the economy swooning, restructuring assignments are on the rise in Asia as much as elsewhere in the world.

Some of the assets of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, the now-defunct firm of convicted fraud mastermind Bernard Madoff, may be in Gibraltar, according to the trustee liquidating the company. Irving Picard, appointed by the Securities Investor Protection Corp. to unwind Madoff’s business, is seeking to hire attorneys at the law firm Attias & Levy to represent him in the British territory as he seeks to recover property, according to a filing today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. The filing didn’t specify what the assets were.

US-based Primus Telecommunications Group, together with three affiliated holding companies, said it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy so it could undergo a restructure. The company will reduce its principal debt obligations and interest payments by more than 50 percent. The restructure will grant the company a three year extension on its debt maturities and will allow the company to continue operating as it is, The Australian reported.

The number of people at work in the 15 countries that then used the euro fell by 453,000 in the final three months of 2008, an acceleration from the 80,000 jobs lost in the third quarter, The Wall Street Journal reported. The figures represent a drop in employment of 0.3% for the fourth quarter, compared with a fall of 0.1% in the prior period, European Union statistics agency Eurostat said. The third-quarter decline was the first since records began in 1995.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao expressed concern over the outlook for the U.S. government debt China holds, urging Washington to take effective policies to restore the American economy to health, The Wall Street Journal reported. Speaking at his annual news conference--a rare opportunity for reporters to ask the premier questions directly--Mr. Wen voiced confidence in the Chinese government's ability to keep its own economy growing, saying it is willing to do what it takes to ensure China meets its traditional growth target of around 8% this year.

One in five of Europe's small biotech companies risk bankruptcy this year as the credit crunch starves the sector of vital funding, according to a study published on Monday. The result could be the loss of 20,000 highly skilled science jobs. The financial crisis has hit European biotechnology particularly hard because the vast majority of firms are still at an early, loss-making stage of development . That makes them extremely vulnerable to decisions by both banks and equity investors to pull in their horns.

Finance chiefs from the Group of 20 vowed to work together to clean up the toxic assets that helped trigger the financial crisis and led banks to rack up more than $1 trillion in losses, Bloomberg reported. Officials meeting near London this weekend outlined guidelines on how governments should rid banks of distressed securities that have devastated companies from Citigroup Inc. to Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc.