Representatives from Opel's 4,000 dealers in Europe are expected to vote in favor of taking a direct equity stake in the ailing German carmaker when they meet in Vienna on Friday, Reuters reported. The umbrella association Euroda wants all of its dealers to contribute 150 euros from every sold car over the next three years into a joint fund that could raise as much as 500 million euros in fresh equity. Together with Opel's 50,000 European workers, they would like to hold a blocking minority in any new Opel company.

Porsche SE’s controlling shareholders, the Porsche and Piech families, plan to meet in Salzburg, Austria today to hash out how to combine the sports-car maker with Volkswagen AG and reduce €9 billion ($12 billion) of debt, according to two people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported. The proposals under consideration include merging the carmakers and finding an investor to buy a stake in the combined company or selling the Porsche AG automotive unit to Volkswagen in return for cash and shares, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private.

Austria is not on the brink of default and can cope with any risks caused by the exposure of domestic banks to emerging Europe, Austrian officials said. Austrian banks are among the biggest lenders to formerly Communist areas of central and eastern Europe and have lent the equivalent of 75 percent of its gross domestic product to clients in the region, Forbes reported. 'The creditworthiness of the state of Austria and of the Austrian banking sector is beyond any doubt,' Austrian National Bank Governor Ewald Nowotny said in a statement late on Tuesday.

Julius Meinl V, the scion of a Viennese business dynasty whose name has been synonymous since the days of the Hapsburgs with luxuries like exotic coffee, handmade tortes and discreet private banking, has been jailed on suspicion of fraud at a company linked to the family, the International Herald Tribune reported. Prosecutors accused Mr. Meinl of artificially bolstering shares of the real estate company Meinl European Land on the Vienna stock exchange, even as its investments in real estate across Eastern and Central Europe cratered. Mr.

Austria's banks exert an outsize influence beyond the country's borders. In the 1990s, after the fall of communism, banks based in Vienna expanded eastward and came to dominate finance in Eastern Europe. Today, however, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine--where Austrian banks nearly cornered the market--have sought emergency aid from the International Monetary Fund. Foreign investors are fleeing Eastern Europe, worried that the problems could spread. Credit-rating agencies have warned that Austrian banks are highly exposed if Eastern European borrowers trigger a wave of defaults.

Russia's gas price dispute with Ukraine escalated Tuesday, disrupting deliveries to the European Union in the midst of a bitter cold spell, with a number of countries reporting that gas supplies had been suspended or reduced, and Germany predicting a possible shortage, the International Herald Tribune reported. Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Macedonia, Turkey, Greece, the Czech Republic and Austria reported that gas supplies had been suspended or reduced after Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, reduced gas shipments through Ukraine.

Austrian private bank Bank Medici was placed under state supervision on Friday amid bigger exposure to the Bernard Madoff scandal than previously disclosed. A source close to the matter told Reuters on Friday the bank holds over $3 billion in funds exposed to what could be Wall Street's biggest fraud. It is still not clear how much cash has been lost. Austria appointed a supervisor to the bank, financial regulator FMA said, in the first known case where a government has stepped in to run a bank caught in the alleged $50 billion Madoff fraud.

The European Commission plans to propose that “fundamentally sound” banks can repay government aid at rates as low as 7 percent, laying the groundwork for approval of plans by France and Austria to recapitalize lenders, Bloomberg reported. European governments are seeking to shore up the financial system after the credit crisis froze inter-bank lending over the past two months. European Union finance ministers asked European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes to impose less stringent repayment conditions on fundamentally sound banks.