Last summer, Deutsche Bank AG trumpeted a deal to strengthen the finances of Europe’s largest zinc smelter, Nyrstar NV. Less than a year later, the Belgian company is undergoing a massive debt restructuring, and the $150 million financing structure set up by Deutsche Bank is in line for losses of as much as 70 percent, Bloomberg News reported. Although relatively small in absolute terms, the losses are a black eye for Deutsche Bank, one of the leading financiers of the natural resources industry.

Lufthansa has added to worries about the European aviation sector with a profit warning, two weeks after low-cost carrier easyJet spooked the market, the Financial Times reported. In an after-hours statement on Monday, the group said that rising fuel costs would send it to a worse than expected first-quarter loss, prompting its shares to drop 4.4 per cent in early trading on Tuesday. They recovered to trade flat by mid-morning.

ING chief executive Ralph Hamers has approached Commerzbank’s boss Martin Zielke suggesting a cross-border merger of both banks that could include the relocation of ING’s headquarters to Frankfurt, the Financial Times reported. The move from the Dutch adds another twist to the protracted takeover saga over Germany’s second-largest listed lender.

The Republic’s financial regulator is seeking powers from Government to demand that banks hold extra capital to safeguard against hidden risks to the Republic’s economy. Central Bank of Ireland governor Philip Lane told the University College Dublin (UCD) school of economics that, alongside normal risks, the Republic’s dependence on hi-tech multinationals left its banks vulnerable to shocks to this industry, The Irish Times reported.

Royal Bank of Scotland has been accused of “kicking people when they’re down” by enforcing aggressive debt collection policies against customers who own leasehold properties, the Financial Times reported. The taxpayer-owned bank forces mortgage customers who fall into arrears owing to disputes with their freeholder or property management company to repay the debt within 12 months or face repossession, despite a longstanding legal precedent that allows most borrowers to repay mortgage arrears over the remaining term of their loan.

Greek revival is an architectural style involving columns of marble. It’s also a good description of a ridiculed nation’s prestige among investors, involving columns of numbers measuring unexpected economic durability, a Bloomberg View reported. Global investors snapped up 2.5 billion euros worth of Greece’s 10-year bonds last month, the first such offering in nine years. That made the Hellenic Republic's debt the world’s most prized, buoyed by gross domestic product growth that’s outperforming Germany, France and the euro zone.

Cyprus is weighing an early repayment for part of a 2.5 billion-euro ($2.8 billion) Russian loan that dates back to the low point of the financial crisis, two government officials said, after yields on the country’s 10-year debt hit a record low last week, Bloomberg News reported. While the government is seriously considering early repayment, no final decision has been made yet, said one of the officials, who asked not to be named citing the ongoing decision-making process.

Trafigura Group Ltd. will take control of Nyrstar NV, Europe’s biggest zinc smelter, as part of a deal to restructure the struggling company’s debt and steer it away from bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Under the agreement, Trafigura -- Nyrstar’s main shareholder as well as a top supplier, customer and financier -- offered a package of its own debt securities to Nyrstar’s creditors in exchange for them writing off debt.

Italy’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Parmalat against a lower court ruling that it pay $431 million in damages to Citibank in a case stemming from the dairy group’s bankruptcy more than 15 years ago, Reuters reported. Reuters reviewed a copy of the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday. Parmalat, now owned by France’s Lactalis, collapsed in 2003 after the discovery of a 14 billion euro ($15.8 billion) hole in its accounts.

Thomas Cook has told shareholders that it may have been regularly in breach of its own borrowing limits, marking the latest setback for the travel company which is restructuring in the face of shifting consumer habits, the Financial Times reported. The group said on Friday that the board had received external advice that its current interpretation of its financing limits may have led the company to “inadvertently” exceed the borrowing rules in its articles of association.