United Kingdom

Leveraged buyouts may help push corporate defaults in Europe to a record 14.7 percent this year, according to Standard & Poor’s. Between 90 and 112 speculative-grade companies in western Europe rated by S&P may default this year, the New York-based firm said in a report today, increasing an earlier estimate of as much as 11.1 percent. Defaults will be “materially higher” among companies purchased in LBOs, where target firms are loaded with acquisition debt, S&P said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday threatened to wreck the London summit if France’s demands for tougher financial regulation are not met, the Times Online reported. France will not accept a G20 that produces a “false success with language that sounds good but contains no commitments”, his advisers said.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who pledged to freeze his own salary last night, said U.K. companies shouldn’t award big bonuses to executives whose efforts have backfired, Bloomberg reported. “Most people who have worked hard to build up their firm or shop don’t understand why any company would give rewards for failure or how some people have grown fabulously wealthy making failed bets with other people’s money,” Brown told religious leaders at St. Paul’s cathedral in London today.

As oil sands developer BA Energy Inc. seeks help from an Alberta court Friday to prevent a fire sale of its assets and appease nervous bankers, it joins a growing list of Canadian oil and gas companies fighting for their lives amid the credit crunch, the Calgary Herald reported on a Financial Post story. While so far only smaller players have run into trouble, insolvency experts say the flood of energy companies headed to court will swell if energy prices stay weak.

AIG executives in Europe are adamant they should not have to return their controversial bonuses and some feel that pressure on them to do so may amount to blackmail, according to a company employee and internal emails. AIG Financial Products unit head Gerald Pasciucco told a staff meeting for UK and Paris employees on Monday that he thought a demand for repayments was to a certain extent "blackmail," said a London-based recipient of one of the retention bonuses from the bailed-out insurer.

China called for the creation of a new currency to eventually replace the dollar as the world's standard, proposing a sweeping overhaul of global finance that reflects developing nations' growing unhappiness with the U.S. role in the world economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The unusual proposal, made by central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan in an essay released Monday in Beijing, is part of China's increasingly assertive approach to shaping the global response to the financial crisis. Mr.

Carmaker Renault on Friday announced a production boost at one of its French plants but distanced itself from a minister's comments that the move amounted to transfer of foreign auto jobs back to home soil, Reuters reported. As the world's leading carmakers battle to survive the worst sales crisis for decades in an industry now flirting with protectionism, French Industry Minister Luc Chatel characterised the temporary output increase as a first sign that aid measures for the country's auto sector were working.

Europe risks being the last region to pull itself out of recession unless it can present a united front on the economic crisis and bulk up stimulus plans, according to the head of Italy’s business lobby group. Emma Marcegaglia, president of Confindustria, told the Financial Times in a video interview that the Group of 20 summit in London next month was doomed to failure if Europe did not take a co-ordinated approach to ending the crisis and forget about side issues such as hedge fund regulation, the Financial Times reported.

At least 17 of the 20 major nations that vowed at a November summit to avoid protectionist steps that could spark a global trade war have violated that promise, with countries from Russia to the United States to China enacting measures aimed at limiting the flow of imported goods, according to a World Bank report unveiled yesterday. The report underscores a "worrying" trend toward protectionism as countries rush to shield their ailing domestic industries during the global economic crisis, The Washington Post reported.

Finance chiefs from the Group of 20 vowed to work together to clean up the toxic assets that helped trigger the financial crisis and led banks to rack up more than $1 trillion in losses, Bloomberg reported. Officials meeting near London this weekend outlined guidelines on how governments should rid banks of distressed securities that have devastated companies from Citigroup Inc. to Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc.