Gordon Brown received a twin blow today when a leading ratings agency warned Britain to get a tighter grip on its record budget deficit and figures revealed that the slump of the past 18 months was now officially the deepest since the second world war, The Guardian reported. Fitch said that the UK – along with France and Spain – needed to "articulate more credible and stronger fiscal consolidation during the course of 2010 to underpin confidence in the sustainability of public finances".
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A senior General Motors Co. executive said Tuesday that the final restructuring plan for GM's Opel/Vauxhall unit still could hinge on aid commitments from European governments, Dow Jones reported. The company aims to advance a new €3.3 billion turnaround plan for the European operation in two to three weeks and wants aid to supplement further investment of its own. Nick Reilly, president of GM's international operations, said there was no "bidding war" among European countries looking to preserve local auto jobs with financial support.
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The Bank of Spain said on Tuesday that it has approved the takeover of the only Spanish bank to be bailed out during the financial crisis, Caja Castilla La Mancha (CCM), Reuters reported. A savings bank from the region of Asturias, Cajastur, will take control of CCM if the general assemblies of both regional banks approve the terms of the deal, the Bank of Spain said in a statement.
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At this time last year Jim Flynn and Nathan Berkley seemed to have it made. Their publishing house, Derwent Howard Media, looked to be thriving, with a string of successful specialist magazines led by flagship titles Official PlayStation Magazine, Ultimate Nintendo and Australian 360, The Australian reported. Just a year later it has all fallen apart. As of last week the company is in administration and faces being wound up. Berkley has moved to Spain and seemingly cut off all contact and a lot of people are concerned for their jobs, potentially out of pocket, and very confused.
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Labor unions at the Adam Opel AG car factory in northeastern Spain said Monday they had accepted a new restructuring agreement reached with Magna International Inc., clearing at least one obstacle to the Canadian company's plans to take over the General Motors Co. subsidiary together with Russia's OAO Sberbank, The Wall Street Journal reported. The European Commission, the European Union's executive branch, meanwhile, said it has set a Nov. 27 deadline for its antitrust review of the planned takeover.
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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".
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More uncertainty was injected into the planned sale of General Motors Co.'s Opel to a group led by Magna International Inc. as Spain urged European regulators to investigate the agreement and Germany's Free Democrats, consistent critics of the deal, were poised to win a powerful voice in Germany's new government, The Wall Street Journal reported. The deal has run into steady fire from Magna customers and European governments alike since the Canadian auto-parts maker reached a preliminary agreement to buy a majority stake in Opel earlier this month.
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Spain's government on Saturday agreed a 2010 budget, which includes tax rises to cover increases in government spending as Spain fights a recession after a huge housing boom, Finfacts reported. The government said in a statement that it now forecasts a total 2010 budget deficit equal to 8.1% of GDP (gross domestic product), compared to 8.4% previously and the Euro 3% Growth and Stability Pact.
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The president of a leading European business group has condemned Germany's plan to sweeten the sale of Opel, General Motors' European arm, to a Canadian-led consortium with an offer of billions of euros in subsidies, the Financial Times reported. "We would have been much better off if we had had a structured insolvency. That would have left Opel in Europe in a much stronger position," said Jürgen Thumann, head of BusinessEurope, a pan-European employers' federation.
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Unless government programs for the unemployed are refined, there is a danger that high jobless rates will persist beyond 2010 in advanced economies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned on Wednesday. The international organization said that unemployment among its 30 member nations would rise to nearly 10 percent by the end of 2010, above its previous post-1970 peak of 7.5 percent during the second quarter of 1993, The New York Times reported.
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