Loan transfers to the “bad bank,” the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) are likely to be delayed until 2010, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said yesterday, on a day when Irish banks again were subject to a wave of selling on stock markets.

Principal news stories from the Irish Independent, Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Financial Times and New York Times.

With a wide gap between the Irish employer and employee union bodies, IBEC and ICTU, on budgetary policy, IBEC have flunked the opportunity to propose radical reform in its pre-Budget submission. Like the trade unions, it remains in its comfort zone of tribal conservatism. So the credibility gap continues on the perceptions of both sides in how best to tackle the crisis in the public finances consistent with building a sustainable competitive economy.

Global SMEs: A majority of small and medium-sized enterprises around the world are optimistic about their growth prospects in the next two years even as they suffer from the dwindling availability of finance, according to a new study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by the UK’s Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and its counterparts in Canada and Australia. Financing conditions are unlikely to improve before 2011.

Blackstone has begun talks with lenders to cut $5 billion from the $20 billion debt load carried by Hilton, as the private-equity firm seeks to protect its single biggest investment from default.

Markets news on stocks, currencies and commodities; Dublin shares plunged over 6% today and US new home sales were reported to have unexpectedly fallen in September.

Some of the country’s top office-building owners reported they are cutting rents and increasing tenant incentives to keep buildings filled during one of the worst commercial real-estate markets in decades.

More than 25 years ago, when the U.S. commercial real-estate began to emerge from its last collapse, Germans snapped up properties at discount prices. History may be repeating itself.

The European Commission on Wednesday approved a restructuring of the the nationalised UK bank Northern Rock that will lead to it being split into two and the “good” parts of the business sold off.

Norway on Wednesday became the first European country to raise interest rates since the current financial crisis began, lifting its benchmark rate by 0.25 percentage point to 1.5% in response to signs of economic recovery.