The chief executive of the debt charity StepChange, Mike O'Connor, said the figures "point to a worrying rise in people's reliance on credit".
"The industry is designed almost as a Ponzi scheme," said Scott Johnson, chief executive of US Debt Resolve, a debt settlement company based in Dallas, which he portrays as a rare island of integrity in a sea of shady competitors.
[Page A1.] Ozires Silva has offered to resign as chief executive of Varig, the debt-laden Brazilian airline, as it negotiated to secure $300 million.
The excesses of Europe's rush to build new digital wireless networks claimed another casualty today, when the chief executive of Royal KPN, the Netherlands' debt-laden telephone company, abruptly resigned.
The furore surrounding the planned Hinkley Point nuclear power station in Somerset is likely to go, er, nuclear on Wednesday when MPs question the UK chief executive of EDF, the debt-laden, state-controlled French utility that is meant to be building the plant.
The bank also removed some lower-level executives, including the head of debt markets.
Chevron, the nation's third-largest oil company, is close to an agreement to acquire Texaco for about $36 billion in stock plus the assumption of debt, executives close to the negotiations said.
Rozanne Andersen, chief executive of ACA International, an association of debt collection companies, said she did not believe that old consumer debt should expire at all.
Refco and 23 affiliates sought bankruptcy protection on Oct. 17, 2005, a week after disclosing that the former chief executive, Phillip R. Bennett, hid $430 million of debt.
Correction: January 30 , 2004 Friday A report in the World Business Briefing column on Saturday about a contract extension for Bertelsmann's chief executive, Gunter Thielen, misstated the amount of debt held by the company when he took over in August 2002.
