Headlines

The Chinese government’s largest investment ever in a Western company, a proposed $19.5 billion stake in the Australian-British mining giant Rio Tinto Group, collapsed early Friday, dealing a blow both to China’s global corporate ambitions and to its efforts to gain clout in the natural resources market, The New York Times reported. The board of Rio Tinto announced the decision after meeting in London on Thursday, saying the company had ended the deal it struck in February to sell the stake to China’s state-owned Aluminum Corporation of China, also known as Chinalco.

India's biggest energy group, Reliance Industries Ltd, said on Wednesday a European textile unit, Trevira, had applied in a German court to start of insolvency proceedings with a restructuring plan, Reuters reported. "The move follows major efforts by the company to overcome the impact of industrial slowdown in Europe particularly of the automotive and textile sectors to whom it is an important supplier," Reliance, India's most valuable listed firm, said in a statement. Trevira makes polyester fibres and filament yarns, and reported turnover of €323 million ($459 million) in 2008.

Iceland’s central bank lowered the benchmark interest rate by a percentage point, defying the International Monetary Fund, as the economy slumps into its worst recession in 60 years, Bloomberg reported. Policy makers lowered the repo rate to 12 percent from 13 percent, Reykjavik-based Sedlabanki said on its Web site today. The rate cut is the fourth since the island received a $5.1 billion IMF-led bailout in November.

A failed Latvian government debt auction on Wednesday sent tremors across financial markets as investors feared that emerging nations round the world would struggle to find buyers for a huge wave of sovereign debt issuance, the Financial Times reported. The auction failure revived concerns about the economies of central and eastern Europe and triggered a sell-off in the shares of Swedish banks, which have invested heavily in the Baltic nation. The currencies of several east European countries fell sharply against the dollar.

The Chinese bidder for Hummer says it plans to give the gas-guzzling vehicles new life by promoting the brand around the world, including China, and by investing in clean-engine technologies. However, little in the short history of Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. suggests how it might pull off the turnaround of General Motors Corp.'s Hummer brand, a collection of rugged sport-utility vehicles based on the concept of the U.S. military Humvee vehicle, The Wall Street Journal reported.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a rare public rebuke of central banks, suggested the European Central Bank and its counterparts in the U.S. and Britain have gone too far in fighting the financial crisis and may be laying the groundwork for another financial blowup. "I view with great skepticism the powers of the Fed, for example, and also how, within Europe, the Bank of England has carved out its own small line," Ms. Merkel said in a speech in Berlin.

Rod Petricevic and Robert Roest, directors of the collapsed Bridgecorp Group of companies, are banned from directing or managing a company in New Zealand for five years, The National Business Review reported. The Deputy Registrar of Companies Peter Barker found the failings of Mr Petricevic and Mr Roest to be "serious and fundamental". The ban is separate from the criminal charges that Mr Petricevic and Mr Roest are also facing. Mr Barker said that nothing in his decisions altered any arguments made by Mr Petricevic or Mr Roest in any other proceedings.

As governments worldwide try to spend their way out of recession, many countries are finding themselves in the same situation as embattled consumers: paying higher interest rates on their rapidly expanding debt, The New York Times reported. Increased rates could translate into hundreds of billions of dollars more in government spending for countries like the United States, Britain and Germany.

Debt defaults by Asian companies so far this year have risen to the highest level since Asia was hit by the 1997-98 financial crisis and will likely rise even higher as the global recession hurts the region's export-dependent economies, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said Thursday. As of May 22, nine issuers out of Asia Pacific had defaulted, matching the historic high posted in 1998, S&P said. Defaults this year, all involving junk-grade companies, affected debt worth $7.3 billion.

Hummer owners are an unusual breed, but a little-known Chinese company's surprise purchase of the American maker of gas-guzzling, military-style SUVs is audacious even by their standards, the Associated Press reported. Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co., which said Tuesday it was buying the General Motors Corp. unit, is four years old and has just 4,300 employees. It makes vehicles, but they are cement mixers and tow trucks, not passenger cars. Tengzhong is based in China's mountainous southwest, far from the east coast heart of China's auto industry.