Headlines

There was a time, just over a year ago, when examinerships were seen as a sort of panacea for businesses in distress. But that was when there were relatively few companies petitioning for them, and when they had a very high success rate, The Sunday Business Post reported. That success rate has fallen considerably, to such an extent that the courts have shown real signs of unwillingness to grant protection--but, all the while, businesses are continuing to fail, and are looking for mechanisms to deal with that failure.

The number of insolvencies in Romania is likely to exceed 20,000 in 2009 from 14,500 a year earlier as a repercussion of the global financial crisis, the National Union of Insolvency Practitioners (ANPIR) forecast. Around 1,600 cases of insolvency were recorded in January from 1,000 in the same month of the previous year, ANPIR president Arin Octav Stanescu reported. Debt recovery fell to 2.0 million euros in January from a monthly average of 35-40 million euros in 2007 and 2008.

The German government distanced itself on Monday from any commitment to Opel's future, saying it would wait for the ailing automaker to present a business plan before considering state guarantees. Opel, the German unit of General Motors, needs some €3.3 billion ($4.15 billion) to keep afloat through to the end of 2011, a source at the carmaker told Reuters on Friday.

Global Business System Corp. has become the first Kospi-listed company ordered to go into bankruptcy by the Seoul Central District Court since the global economic crisis, the JoongAng Daily reported. The court said yesterday that the Seoul branch of Netherlands-based ABN Amro Bank filed a bankruptcy petition against GBS Corp. in November 2008 after the bank failed to collect $6 million in bonds from GBS. “GBS Corp.

Potential bids are being drawn up for CanWest Global Communications Corp.'s coveted specialty channels in the event the media company is forced to liquidate assets, The Globe and Mail reported. Sources say investment bankers have approached two Canadian broadcasters, Corus Entertainment Inc. and Astral Media Inc., to formulate a bid for CanWest's stake in specialty assets formerly owned by Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc.

Bankruptcy at Emaar Properties' US unit should help the Dubai developer turn the page on its American foray and face worsening conditions in its home market, analysts said yesterday. The largest listed Arab real estate developer has been forced to make impairments and write-downs of around Dh4 billion since it bought US home builder John Laing Homes for $1.05bn (Dh3.8bn) in June 2006, Emirates Business 24/7 reported.

Beleaguered Swedish car maker Saab Automobile sought legal restructuring Friday to stave off bankruptcy after it was abandoned by its owner General Motors, Saab and GM said. "We submitted a request today" to the Vaenersborg district court in southwestern Sweden, Saab spokeswoman Margareta Hoegstroem told Agence France-Presse, adding that the company expected the court to announce later Friday whether it accepted the request.

Shares of Magna Entertainment Corp plunged nearly 25 percent on Thursday after the racetrack and gaming company said it may not meet its debt obligations following the cancellation of a deal that would have spun it off from its parent, Reuters reported. MI Developments, the real estate arm of auto parts maker Magna International Inc and MEC's controlling stakeholder, said it scrapped the spinoff plan because current global economic conditions likely would have prevented it from arranging new debt financing. That caused MEC, which counts U.S.

World stock markets fell sharply Friday as the selling pressure on Wall Street was expected to continue at the open later amid pessimism about the ability of governments to prevent the deepest global economic downturn in generations, the Associated Press reported. Investors in Asia and Europe found few reasons to wade into the market after the Dow Jones industrial average breached the levels it touched in November, when global equities went into a tailspin as the financial crisis gathered steam.

Japan’s government is considering earmarking public money for companies that take up work-sharing to curb surging joblessness as the world's second-largest economy slides into what authorities are calling Japan's worst recession since World War II, the Associated Press reported. Common in parts of Europe, work-sharing means slashing employees' pay and hours instead of firing people outright. Two or three people might share what previously was one person's job.