Ireland’s Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan TD, today announced the Government’s agreement to the establishment of a single fully integrated regulatory institution, the Central Bank of Ireland Commission, Finfacts reported. This new structure will replace the current board structure of the Central Bank and the Financial Services Regulatory Authority to achieve the highest performance standards for the new organisation. Substantial additional staff has been promised.

The ESRI (Economic and Social Research Institute) says today that the Irish Economy will shrink 9.2 per cent in 2009, which will be the sharpest fall in economic growth experienced by an industrialised country since the Great Depression, Finfacts Ireland reported. The ESRI says employment in 2009 will be 187,300 lower than in 2008, on an annual average basis. The ESRI says the implications of the downturn for employment are highly negative. It expects employment in 2009 to be 187,300 lower than in 2008, on an annual average basis.

One of Australia's most extraordinary business stories of the past few decades is the spectacular rise and equally spectacular fall of the ABC Learning Group, analysis by The New Zealand Herald found. ABC began with one centre in Brisbane in 1988. By 2007 it had used hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, shareholders and banks to grow into the world's second-biggest childcare operator with more than 2300 centres in Australia, the United States, Britain, and New Zealand. In 2007, it reported profits of more than $150 million.

The bank has installed a receiver over Thedforde Trading in an effort to secure about €20 million it lent to the firm, The Sunday Business Post reported. Thedforde Trading is controlled by Simon Kelly, the son of Dublin property developer Paddy Kelly. Thedforde Trading has been trying to redevelop the premises into shops and a hotel, and had lodged a number of planning applications. It recently received planning permission for a part of the proposed development. Thedforde is the latest in a series of companies controlled by the Kelly family to be seized by banks.

Ireland will take commercial-property assets off the books of six of its biggest lenders and house them in a new state agency, a plan it hopes will restore international confidence in the nation's financial system, The Wall Street Journal reported. If necessary, the state will take majority stakes in Ireland's two main banks. Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said Wednesday that all land and development loans of Ireland's major banks will be housed in the new National Asset Management Agency.

Ireland’s government, reeling from the loss of its top credit rating by Standard & Poor’s, may increase taxes and cut spending in an emergency budget today aimed at stemming the biggest deficit among euro-area nations, Bloomberg reported. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, who is making his second budget speech in six months, says the country faces a “very grave national crisis” as the deficit heads for 13 percent of gross domestic product, four times the European Union limit. He may also announce plans to remove toxic property loans from the nation’s biggest banks.

The launch of an Irish '"bad bank" to quarantine toxic debts of the banks could require loan write-offs which match or are more severe than the banks’ worst-case scenarios under proposals being devised for the Government, Finfacts Ireland reported. Economist Dr Peter Bacon has advised the Irish Government to establish a bad debt company to offload the problem loans off the banks’ balance sheets to free up lending.

Housing markets across Europe suffered steep declines in both prices and activity during 2008 and the situation isn't likely to improve much in 2009, according to an annual report published Thursday by the U.K.-based Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. A continued lack of mortgage-credit availability will keep European housing markets in the doldrums, the survey said. The report shows that while U.K.

The European Central Bank is struggling to keep up with the region’s plunging economy, Bloomberg reported. Even as President Jean-Claude Trichet and his colleagues prepare to cut interest rates to a record low today, the 16 nations that share the euro are mired in a recession deeper than envisioned in their worst-case scenario just three months ago. The pain is building as companies including chemical-maker BASF SE cut investment and jobs, Spain and Ireland run an increasing risk of default and trade partners to the east crumble.

Beleaguered US insurance giant American International Group (AIG) has begun to lay off staff at a number of its Irish divisions as part of a restructuring, the Irish Independent reported. And some of the businesses will be rebranded as American International Underwriters--the company which manages a number of AIG’s overseas units. Staff were informed of the restructuring plan yesterday and were told it could be completed within six weeks.