North America

One of Ireland's best-known architectural firms Murray Ó Laoire has gone into liquidation, with the loss of more than 120 jobs, The Irish Times reported. The company cited cumulative bad debts, the difficult market and problems in getting paid on time for the collapse of the business. Murray Ó Laoire has offices in Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Slovakia, Russia, Germany, Libya, Barbados and Abu Dhabi. The company employs 127 people, with the majority of its staff based in Ireland.

Haemacure Corp said it received permission from the Superior Court of the Province of Quebec to sell its assets to Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc, a secured creditor of Haemacure, Reuters reported. The Canada-based biotherapeutic company said the United States Bankruptcy Court had previously authorized the sale to Angiotech of the assets of Haemacure's U.S. subsidiary. Haemacure also said it obtained a second extension, until April 19, within which to make a proposal to its creditors.

Michel Barnier, the European commissioner in charge of financial market regulation, said he would propose controls to curb speculative trading in credit default swaps, (CDS) a form of debt insurance that has been blamed for worsening Greece's economic problems, Telegraph.co.uk reported. His measures will target so-called naked selling of CDS, where insurance contracts are sold to buyers who do not own the debt. The cost of CDS on Greece rocketed when fears grew that the country could default on its debt.

General Motors of Canada Ltd. has rejected calls to follow its parent company's example and voluntarily reinstate dealers who were terminated when the auto maker restructured its operations last year, saying courts and arbitrators should rule on demands by some dealers that their businesses be restored, The Globe and Mail reported. "We cannot rewrite history," Marc Comeau, GM Canada's vice-president of sales and marketing, said in a letter to Canadian Automobile Dealers Association (CADA) president Rick Gauthier and the company's remaining Canadian dealers. That answer to Mr.

The sale of Canada's largest English-language daily newspaper chain has attracted some of the country's financial heavyweights as potential suitors, the Financial Post reported. Among the shortlist of bidders for Canwest Limited Partnership, the newspaper division of Winnipeg-based Canwest Global Communications Corp., are Alberta Investment Management Corp.

Europe moved ahead of the United States on Tuesday in advocating new measures to ban certain types of financial speculation after concerns surfaced that traders used complex financial instruments to push Greece deeper into a fiscal crisis and threaten the European economy, The Washington Post reported. The European Commission said it would back a proposal to restrict trading in a type of financial instrument, known as a credit default swap, that is linked to the prices of government and corporate debt.

A day before he meets with President Obama, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on Monday called for "decisive and collective action" between Europe and the United States to curb the financial speculation believed by many to have exacerbated the debt crisis now hitting Greece and other financially troubled nations in Europe, The Washington Post reported. "Together with my European partners, we have taken a common initiative to strengthen financial regulation, particularly vis-a-vis speculation," Papandreou said, according to a copy of his speech.

AbitibiBowater Inc. has struck a new deal with its main union that a labour leader says will help it stave off collapse as it prepares to file a plan by the end of the month to vault out of bankruptcy protection, The Vancouver Sun reported. The insolvent paper giant, which has been under creditor protection since last April, agreed to a tentative work agreement covering 8,000 workers with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada following arduous negotiations, the union said Sunday.

General Motors of Canada Ltd. should match its parent company and reinstate some of the 240 dealerships that were terminated last year when the auto maker was struggling to stay out of bankruptcy protection in Canada, the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association (CADA) says, the Globe and Mail reported. General Motors Co. offered Friday to permit as many as 660 of the 2,000 U.S. dealers it terminated last year to set up shop again and its Canadian unit should follow suit, says CADA, which represents a total of about 3,000 new vehicle dealers in Canada.