Headlines

With taxpayers tethered to its fate, Orchestra London moved a step closer yesterday to getting nearly a half-million dollars from city hall, The London Free Press reported. London's board of control unanimously recommended giving the operating grant to the symphony. Effectively, it had no choice: Without it, the orchestra would default on a $500,000 loan council guaranteed last month. The loan guarantee and grant make possible a turnaround by a symphony that had been on pace to run a fourth straight deficit topping $300,000.

Shares in leading Indian outsourcers such as Infosys Technologies and Wipro fell on Thursday after one of their clients Nortel Networks Corp filed for bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Analysts said Nortel's work contributed only a small portion of revenue for the outsourcers, but the news dealt another blow to the export-driven companies that have seen their growth slowing sharply as a global economic turmoil crimped demand. Officials at the Indian outsourcers were not immediately available for comment.

The U.K. government detailed a £21 billion ($30 billion) plan to help small and medium-size companies access credit, and held out the prospect of broader support to come, The Wall Street Journal reported. "We will not hesitate to look at other measures that are necessary to get the financial system moving," Prime Minister Gordon Brown told lawmakers. He said that there will be more help for companies struggling to get trade credit insurance and that the government is prepared to help the financing arms of U.K. auto firms.

Private equity investors and childcare rivals are looking at making bids for the New Zealand childcare sites of ABC Learning Centres. Offers for its New Zealand assets may land as early as next week from private equity firms and child care operators, the Australian Financial Review reported today.

Viyella has shut 20 of its House of Fraser concessions, after the classic womenswear business fell into administration last week, Drapers reported. Viyella is understood to be shutting a further 10 standalone stores by the end of this week, leaving it with between 50 and 70 outlets. Poppleton & Appleby were appointed joint administrators of the business last week.

Nortel Networks Corp., North America’s biggest maker of phone equipment, plunged in European trading after the Globe and Mail reported the company will file for bankruptcy protection as early as today. The board met last night to deal with “a financial crisis,” the newspaper reported, citing people working with Nortel and its creditors. Nortel will file in Toronto and an undisclosed U.S. location, the Globe and Mail reported. The company faces a $107 million interest payment tomorrow, the newspaper said. David Silke, a Nortel spokesman in Ireland, didn’t immediately return a call for comment.

Japan’s corporate bankruptcies rose the most in eight years in 2008 as a deepening recession weakened sales and made it harder for businesses to get funds, Bloomberg reported. Bankruptcies climbed 11 percent from a year earlier to 15,646 cases last year, the fastest pace since 2000, Tokyo Shoko Research Ltd. said in Tokyo today. A total of 33 publicly traded companies went out of business in 2008, the most in the postwar period, the report said. Japanese companies have struggled to find investors willing to purchase their debt since the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September.

Telecom operator TeliaSonera has given notice to 1,200 employees in Sweden as the recession continues to claim its victims, PC World reported. TeliaSonera is under pressure from trends including lower broadband tariffs and a move to mobile and IP (Internet Protocol) based services from fixed telephony, which is its main revenue source. The personnel cuts are part of a plan announced by TeliaSonera last February. The goal is to reduce its staff by 2,900 employees and save approximately 5 billion Swedish kronor (US$609 million).

British music and entertainment retailer Zavvi will close another 18 stores and cut 353 jobs, the collapsed company's administrators said Wednesday. Administrators at Ernst & Young, appointed to run the company after it filed for bankruptcy protection on Dec. 24, said they had received many expressions of interest in Zavvi's operations, but did not found a buyer for all the stores, the Associated Press reported. The administrators said they still hope to all or part of the remaining 74 stores. Zavvi's flagship store in central London is one of those earmarked for closure.

Satyam Computer Services Ltd.'s new board named Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu International and KPMG as auditors to replace PricewaterhouseCoopers in its first step to restore confidence at the company hit by revelations of accounts fraud, The Wall Street Journal reported. The auditors were appointed after Satyam's newly appointed three-member board said Monday it would name new auditors to assess the true financial condition of the Hyderabad-based company, India's fourth-largest software exporter by revenue. Satyam founder and former chairman B. Ramalinga Raju in a Jan.