United Kingdom

Nursery furniture retailer BabyCo has gone into voluntary administration and only four of the company's 22 shops in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia will remain open, Big Pond News reported. Deloitte partners Tim Norman, Sal Algeri and Simon Cathro have been appointed as voluntary administrators of the company on Friday. Mr Norman says slow sales and the competitive nature of the retail industry prompted the company to appoint administrators.

Clients of Lehman Brothers in Europe may have to wait longer to get their assets back after a judge blocked a move to speed the unwinding of the bankruptcy, accountants warned on Friday. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), administrators to Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (LBIE), had asked the High Court to approve a plan to accelerate the return of client's assets, tied up in the bank since its collapse last year, Reuters reported.

Linklaters and Allen & Overy (A&O) have taken lead roles on the €12 billion (£10.3 billion) debt restructuring of ball-bearing manufacturer Schaeffler, in a move which could lead to a merger with auto-parts manufacturer Continental, LegalWeek reported. Linklaters advised a consortium of five lending banks comprising UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, UniCredit, Commerzbank and LBBW, with London and Frankfurt-based banking partners Stephen Lucas and Marc Trinkaus leading the team. The debt restructuring should clear the path for a merger between Schaeffler and Continental.

Canadian companies facing bankruptcy are being given access to a new $1-billion lifeline from Ottawa and major financial firms to provide breathing space to restructure operations and return to solvency, Export Development Canada said yesterday. The EDC said it has agreed to become the top contributor to a new fund that would act as the bank of last resort to struggling companies who are unable to obtain credit through normal channels, The London Free Press reported on a Canadian Press story.

Britain had an 8 billion-pound ($13.2 billion) budget deficit in July, the largest for the month since records began in 1993, as the recession ravaged tax revenue and the cost of unemployment benefits surged, Bloomberg reported. The shortfall compared with a surplus of 5.2 billion pounds a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said in London today. It came in a month when the Treasury usually gets a boost from quarterly tax payments. Britain last had a deficit in July in 1996. The U.K.

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office is to meet with Icelandic investigators in London next month as Reykjavik seeks international help to discover whether criminal wrongdoing played a role in bringing down Iceland’s banking sector, the Financial Times reported. The talks signal increasing co-operation between the UK and Iceland over the corruption probe, even as tensions flare between the two countries over a disputed deal to repay billions of pounds lost by British savers in Icelandic banks.

Bankers are calling for a new London panel to help smooth the restructuring of hundreds of billions of pounds of debt and prevent further ugly fights before courts between lenders, Reuters reported. The group, modelled on the Takeover Panel, would help prevent complex debt workouts being decided before courts, as the number of defaults soars. The restructuring panel would be most useful in cases where a minority of lenders are unreasonably holding out on the other lenders, said Andrew Speirs, managing director at London advisory firm Hawkpoint.

Bankers are calling for a new London panel to help smooth the restructuring of hundreds of billions of pounds of debt and prevent further ugly fights before courts between lenders, Reuters reported. The group, modelled on the Takeover Panel, would help prevent complex debt workouts being decided before courts, as the number of defaults soars. The restructuring panel would be most useful in cases where a minority of lenders are unreasonably holding out on the other lenders, said Andrew Speirs, managing director at London advisory firm Hawkpoint.

Zinc companies in Peru, the world’s third-largest producer, will look to sell more concentrates overseas after the government said smelter Doe Run Peru may file for bankruptcy, according to a creditor, Bloomberg reported. A bankruptcy may take months to complete, said Carlos Galvez, chief financial officer of precious metals producer Cia. de Minas Buenaventura SA, a Doe Run Peru creditor. Doe Run, a unit of Renco Group Inc., may file for bankruptcy to restructure about $156 million of debt, Energy & Mines Minister Pedro Sanchez Gamarra said yesterday.

British coffee retailer Coffee Republic said on Thursday its operating business had been bought out of administration by Arab Investment Ltd, a property firm best known for plans to build a London skyscraper, Reuters reported. Arab Investments said in a separate statement that it planned to expand the business, which currently includes 80 outlets -- around 60 in Britain and the rest in countries including Bulgaria and Saudi Arabia. Read more.