Ireland

The state’s main banks have pressed developers to take advantage of an uplift in the UK property market to sell land and investment assets to recoup loans before they are sold to the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) over the coming months, The Irish Times reported. A number of developers have been encouraged to put land in the UK, including some prime sites in London, on the market as the banks believe they will receive a better deal than if they were to sell the loans at a discount to Nama.

The seasonally adjusted Live register rose to by 3,300 to 426,700 in December the highest level in almost 15 years, new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) showed today, The Irish Times reported. Unemployment rose to 12.5 per cent in December, a 0.1 per cent rise on the 12.4 per cent recorded in the third quarter of the year by the Quarterly National Household Survey. Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said the increase cast "serious doubts" on Taoiseach Brian Cowen's claims that the recession has bottomed out and accused the Government of indifference.

Some hedge funds are starting to wager on painful times ahead for Japan, the world's second-largest economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. These investors, including some who made successful bets against risky mortgages and financial companies in recent years, anticipate trouble for Japan's financial system. Their concern: Government borrowing continues to climb while demand for the nation's debt could taper off.

Youth fashion chain D2 has become the first post-Christmas casualty, collapsing into administration and putting more than 1,000 jobs at risk, the Guardian reported. The retailer, which specialised in brands such as Wrangler, Levis and Kickers, is based in Scotland and had 79 shops, including three in Dublin. Insolvency specialists James Stephen and Dermot Power from BDO Stoy Hayward have been appointed to take control of the business. The D2 website has been taken offline and two Irish stores have closed.

The Irish economy is in bad shape, but the decline has been slowing in recent months. The real issue is what to do now, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ireland has models galore. It could follow Greece, whose Prime Minister George Papandreou stunned observers by responding to the downgrading of his nation's sovereign debt with a plan to increase public-sector pay.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated Thursday that healthier members of the euro zone aren't prepared to abandon Greece and other heavily indebted countries in the currency bloc, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ms. Merkel's comments were the first by a senior European figure in recent days to focus on shared obligations among members of Europe's monetary union, after a flurry of statements by European politicians and ECB officials emphasizing Greece's need to act.

AIB, Ireland's biggest bank, said in a trading update today that it is expecting 2009 bad debt charges to rise to €5.3 billion, up from a previous forecast of €4.3 billion, Finfacts reported. The bank said in an interim management statement, that the charges were weighted towards the €24 billion loan portfolio, that may potentially be transferred to the State "bad bank," the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA). The loans mainly related to the Republic of Ireland division, with some in the UK divisions.

The number of company liquidations in England and Wales in the third quarter of 2009 fell 4.7% on the previous quarter - the first time the rate has fallen this year and possibly a sign that the impact the economic crisis has had on U.K. companies is starting to abate, Dow Jones reported. However, the 4,716 compulsory company liquidations in the third quarter, adjusted on a seasonal basis, still represents an increase of 14.6% on the same period a year earlier, data from the government's Insolvency Service showed Friday. Liz Bingham, U.K.

Bank of Ireland today reported a pre-tax loss of €979m for the six months ending September 30, 2009, compared to a profit of €647m in the same period in 2008, Finfacts reported. The bank made an operating profit of €787m before bad debt charges. It said impairment charges over that period were €1.8bn, reflecting "significant deterioration" in asset quality in its property and construction portfolio.

The IMF forecasts that Spain will be within the group of European economies that recorded a higher rate of bad loans above the European average along with France and Italy, because these countries have a high rate of loans on total assets, according to the Barcelona Reporter. As far as estimates of losses for banks and financial institutions are concerned, their financial losses for the period 2007/10 could be around 412 million euros to 2.3 billion euros, but warned that risks to global financial stability "remains high".