Spain's industry minister criticised energy and engineering group Abengoa on Friday for handing out multi-million euro payoffs to executives in the months before the indebted company entered into pre-insolvency talks with creditors, Reuters reported. Jose Manuel Soria said executives at Abengoa, which could face Spain's largest-ever bankruptcy, had not invested wisely, given the financial cost of the group's accumulated debt was far greater than its cash flow and income.

Korean Company Sambo Motors Co. Ltd has taken control of German tuning company Carlsson, GTSpirit.com reported. The Korean company has promised further investment for the Saarland Merzig company and has sought to reassure Carlsson’s employees that their jobs are secure. Sambo was one of four bidders to made a binding offer during the insolvency process. Carlsson entered into liquidation in April this year following a poor year of sales.

President Vladimir Putin’s annual address to Russia’s parliament last week began with the expected rallying call to fight Islamist terrorism, and praise for the country’s military in Syria. He threatened to make Turkey “regret more than once” shooting down a Russian bomber last month. But then Mr Putin devoted much of his speech to domestic issues — above all, Russia’s growing economic difficulties, the Financial Times reported. Such attention is welcome, though words are not enough.

In finance, things that grow very fast have an irksome tendency to blow up, The Economist reported. American subprime mortgages prior to 2008, southern European sovereign debt in the run-up to 2010 and Japanese banks in the 1980s are but recent examples. So it is worrying that bank lending in emerging markets has ballooned in recent years, from about 77% of GDP in 2007 to 128% at the beginning of this year, according to JPMorgan Chase, a rich-world bank (see chart). That 51-percentage-point jump dwarfs the mere 20-point rise in credit in the rich world in 2002-07.

Workers across Greece walked off their jobs on Thursday, heeding a call by labor unions to join the second general strike in three weeks to protest a new round of austerity measures, the International New York Times reported. The 24-hour walkout shut down public services, disrupted public transportation, left ferries moored in ports, closed schools and forced hospitals to function with reduced staffs.

Spanish power and engineering group Abengoa, in pre-insolvency talks to avoid becoming Spain's largest ever bankruptcy, has stakes in almost 900 subsidiaries and partnerships, a report said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The complexity of Abengoa highlights the difficulty faced by creditors of the Seville-based renewable energy firm to understand the extent of its debts, one of the first tasks they face as they embark on restructuring talks.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will not get involved in the negotiations between Moscow and Kiev to restructure Ukraine’s debt to Russia, IMF Communications Department Director Gerry Rice said in a briefing on Thursday, Sputnik News reported. “We expect Russian and Ukrainian authorities to conduct direct discussions on this matter,” Rice stated.

Central bankers have long talked about the problem of the “zero lower bound.” That’s the idea that interest rates can’t be set below zero. It is an important concept because it would mean there is a limit on how much an economy can be stimulated using monetary policy, the International New York Times reported. The last few years have exposed a problem with this idea. It now looks as if the zero lower bound isn’t a bound. And it isn’t at zero. That was made clear by a decision from the European Central Bank on Thursday.

Creditor banks of Abengoa , in pre-insolvency talks to prevent the engineer becoming Spain's largest ever bankruptcy, are considering involving bondholders in debt restructuring negotiations, two sources familiar with the situation said. It is unusual for bondholders to sit alongside creditors in negotiations connected to insolvency proceedings but in this case there is a common interest to get the company afloat given the massive size of potential losses, the sources said.

Private-sector debt in developing countries is growing so quickly that it threatens the creditworthiness of domestic governments according to new research, underlining concerns that an emerging market slowdown could yet worsen next year, the Financial Times reported. The warning, in a report on Wednesday by Fitch Ratings, one of the three big global credit rating agencies, adds to a rising chorus of concern over EM private sector debt and its impact on global growth.