United States

General Motors asked European governments to help pay most of the $4.9 billion that it needs to restructure its struggling European operations, The Washington Post reported. At talks in Brussels, E.U. nations where GM has plants vowed to avoid individual negotiations with the company before a Dec. 4 meeting, where they will coordinate their response to GM's restructuring plans, due later this week.

W.C. Wood Corp., which owned a freezer factory in Ottawa, announced it couldn't find a buyer in time to avoid liquidating the entire company, Industrial Laser Solutions reported. A Canadian court placed the company in receivership, leaving the Ottawa plant's remaining 150 employees without a job. The company had been looking for a buyer since filing a Companies Creditors Arrangement Act in Canada in May. It received Chapter 15 protection in the United States in June.

Presenting a plan to return UBS to profitability, the chief executive of the battered Swiss bank said Tuesday that he expects the company to be earning nearly $15 billion a year no later than 2014, The New York Times reported. Switzerland’s largest bank plans to reach pretax profit of 15 billion Swiss francs, or $14.9 billion, and a return on equity — a measure of profitability — of 15 percent to 20 percent sometime between 2012 and 2014, it said in a statement ahead of a presentation to investors Tuesday.

Wen Jiabao, China's premier, has pledged $10 billion in new low-cost loans to Africa over the next three years and has defended his country's engagement on the continent against accusations that it is "plundering" the region's oil and minerals, The Washington Post reported. Wen made the pledge Sunday at a China-Africa summit here, at which he also urged the United States to keep its deficit to an "appropriate size" to ensure the "basic stability" of the dollar. The loan pledge for Africa was double a $5 billion commitment made in 2006.

How much debt can an industrialized country carry before the nation’s economy and its currency bow, then break? In Japan, years of stimulus spending on expensive dams and roads have inflated the country’s gross public debt to twice the size of its $5 trillion economy — by far the highest debt-to-G.D.P. ratio in recent memory, The New York Times reported. Just paying the interest on its debt consumed a fifth of Japan’s budget for 2008, compared with debt payments that compose about a tenth of the United States budget.

There is rough news for employees at Arclin Canada with word that workers in Thunder Bay are being laid off, Net News Ledger reported. The move comes as the company continues to restructure. On July 27, 2009, Arclin announced that it reached an agreement in principle with certain of its key senior lenders on the terms of a financial restructuring to strengthen the Company’s balance sheet and enhance its financial flexibility. Under terms of the agreement, Arclin’s funded indebtedness will be reduced from US$234 million to US$60 million.

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.

China unexpectedly ratcheted up pressure on the United States in a widening trade dispute on Sunday evening, taking steps toward imposing tariffs on American exports of automotive products and chicken meat in retaliation for President Obama’s decision late Friday to levy tariffs on tires, The New York Times reported.

Shermag Inc., which is operating under court protection from creditors, said Wednesday that the Quebec Superior Court has approved the purchase of the company by Groupe Bermex Inc. for $1.25 million, The Canadian Press reported. The company said the court has also approved an interim financing deal that will see Bermex contribute of up to $3 million to finance Shermag until the deal closes. Under a deal, Bermex would provide $1.25 million in exchange for nearly 41.7 million new Shermag shares, representing about 70 per cent of the issued and outstanding shares in the company.

The Nortel sale, which has emerged as a test of Canadian national economic strategy, will come under the spotlight tomorrow when MPs hold an emergency hearing on the auctioning of the bankrupt company's prized wireless equipment business, The Toronto Star reported. The scene is set for a day of tense, high-stakes exchanges as the Commons industry committee questions executives from Nortel Networks Corp. and Ericsson, the Swedish company that bid $1.13 billion (U.S.) for Nortel assets.