Troubled Austrian engineering group A-TEC is holding talks with potential investors and hopes to remain a going concern despite a preliminary 2010 net loss of 584.5 million euros ($840.2 million), Reuters reported. A-TEC struck a deal with creditors in December to repay 47 percent of its debts and agreed to find an outside investor by June 30 as a way to avoid bankruptcy. "The management board of A-TEC Industries AG has received non-binding offers from various potential investors and is conducting intensive negotiations with them," it said in a statement on Wednesday.

Austrian technology and engineering group A-TEC struck a deal with creditors on Wednesday to repay 47 percent of its debts and agreed to find an outside investor by June 30 as a way to avoid bankruptcy, Reuters reported. The insolvent industrial conglomerate with more than 11,000 employees was under pressure to find a solution with creditors by a Jan. 20 deadline. Georg Kantner of the Austrian creditor's association KSV said the deal had bought time to find an investor and provided a realistic chance for a turnaround.

Austrian technology and engineering group A-TEC struck a deal with creditors yesterday to repay 47 percent of its debts and agreed to find an outside investor by June 30 as a way to avoid bankruptcy, Reuters reported yesterday. The insolvent industrial conglomerate with more than 11,000 employees was under pressure to find a solution with creditors by a Jan. 20 deadline. Georg Kantner of the Austrian creditor's association KSV said that the deal had bought time to find an investor and provided a realistic chance for a turnaround.

Creditors of A-Tec Industries AG, the insolvent Austrian engineering group, would welcome majority shareholder and Chief Executive Mirko Kovats stepping down, Austrian state broadcaster ORF quoted the spokesman of A-Tec’s creditor committee as saying, Bloomberg News reported today. Kovats’ resignation as CEO “would be beneficial for building trust and it would be very, very acceptable for creditors,” Hans-Georg Kantner of credit protection association KSV Kreditschutzverband von 1870 told ORF radio in an interview.

German public-sector bank BayernLB says it lost nearly €2.62 billion ($3.5 billion) last year - a performance blamed largely on losses and expenses related to former Austrian unit Hypo Group Alpe Adria, The Associated Press reported. The 2009 performance was still an improvement on its huge loss of euro5.08 billion the previous year at the height of the financial crisis. BayernLB said Wednesday that it aims for a "positive result" in 2010. The bank said losses, writedowns and other expenses related to HGAA weighed down its results by a total €3.3 billion last year.

The prospect of an EU intervention in the Greek economy drew a step closer when European finance ministers endorsed a 28-day deadline imposed on its government to show that its budget plan is yielding dividends, The Irish Times reported. With European Central Bank president Jean Claude-Trichet pushing hard for Athens to adopt new budget measures, finance ministers in the wider union backed demands from euro-area ministers for fresh cuts and taxes in four weeks if the current plan is shown to have misfired.

The Netherlands, Germany and Austria have all relied heavily on so-called short-work programs to keep people in their jobs in the wake of the financial crisis. All three have managed to keep unemployment from soaring, but the Dutch have been particularly effective, The Wall Street Journal reported. At 3.7% in October, according to the European Union statistics office, the country's jobless rate is one of the lowest among the world's wealthy nations. After the crisis hit, the Dutch government, labor unions and employers quickly reached an agreement to begin payroll subsidies.

Austria's justice ministry says an investigation has been launched to clarify the circumstances surrounding the near demise of troubled financial institution Hypo Alpe Adria, The Associated Press reported. Austria on Monday nationalized Hypo Alpe Adria, a unit of German public-sector bank BayernLB, to prevent it from sliding into a bankruptcy fueled in part by bad loans - most of them in Eastern Europe. The ministry says prosecutors in the southern city of Klagenfurt are probing whether those responsible for the bank committed breach of trust and fraud.

All cannot be well in the Austrian banking sector despite opposite announcements from the banks themselves, Seeking Alpha reported. Although Raiffeisen Zentralbank, Unicredit subsidiary Bank Austria and Erste Group reported operating profits in Q3 2009 only last week, the latest events from the past weekend suggest that Austria's banks, endangered by their failing ventures in Central and Eastern Europe, are far away from the financially stable positions they wish for themselves.

Bratislava Airport reported that all its past due claims against Slovak low-cost airline SkyEurope Airlines, unpaid on June 22, have been submitted to the court supervising the airline’s restructuring process, The Slovak Spectator reported. On June 22, the Bratislava-based airline was granted protection from creditors, the SITA newswire wrote. Airport spokeswoman Dana Madunická informed SITA that SkyEurope has been settling its obligations within the regime of protection against creditors.