Russian steel and coal producer Mechel has agreed to the terms for restructuring its debt with VTB, the country's second-largest bank said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Separately larger rival Sberbank said it had found two prospective buyers for its share of Mechel's debt. Controlled by businessman Igor Zyuzin, Mechel has been in discussions for months with its main lenders, including VTB, Sberbank and Gazprombank, over a restructuring of debts which at the end of last year were estimated to total $7 billion.

Heta Asset Resolution AG, the Austrian “bad bank” that unveiled a 7 billion-euro ($8 billion) capital hole Wednesday, said an insolvency may ultimately be the only way to shut down the company, Bloomberg News reported. Heta, the remnant of the failed, nationalized Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International AG, warned on Thursday that the insolvency remains on the table even as a debt moratorium imposed by regulators staved it off for now.

European leaders will try again in an emergency summit meeting on Monday to break the deadlock between Greece and its international creditors after a meeting of eurozone finance ministers ended on Thursday with no deal on Greece’s bailout, the International New York Times reported. Without additional aid, Greece faces the prospect of effectively going bankrupt by the end of June, when it owes a payment of 1.6 billion euros, or about $1.8 billion, to the International Monetary Fund, and when the European part of its bailout program ends.

In a related story, Reuters reported that the European Central Bank told a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Thursday that it was not sure if Greek banks, which have been suffering large daily deposit outflows, would be able to open on Monday, officials with knowledge of the talks said. The officials said that during the closed-door meeting of the ministers on Greece, the chairman of the meeting Jeroen Dijsselbloem asked European Central Bank Executive Board member Benoit Coeure if Greek banks would be able to open tomorrow. Coeure answered: "Tomorrow, yes. Monday, I don't know".

Greece's creditors should admit the flaws of earlier rescue loans, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Without this, neither can the political poison between the parties be drained nor can a programme be designed that works. What this means is that even before negotiating terms, the creditors must make four concessions - not financial ones, but intellectual ones. The first is to admit that it was a mistake not to restructure Greece's sovereign debt in April 2010.

Efforts by the Revenue to force indebted people pay VAT on advice to get themselves out of financial trouble have been rejected, the Irish Times reported. In what has been described as a landmark ruling has found that debt management services are not subject to VAT. Essentially, when people approached a debt management agency, Revenue was insisting that they be charge VAT at 23 per cent on the professional service fee charged by the debt agency to handle their case.

All European eyes will be anxiously turned to Greece in the coming days, but Italian eyes are turned more anxiously than most, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Finnish government plans to inject a further 112 million euros ($126 million) into restructuring troubled nickel mine Talvivaara after a potential buyer failed to arrange financing, a minister said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Talvivaara's listed parent company is going through debt restructuring while its key subsidiary, which owns the mining assets, last year applied for bankruptcy protection following a drop in nickel prices, repeated production disruptions and environmental damage.

The central bank of Greece warned on Wednesday that failure to reach a deal in the country’s long-running debt crisis would result in a default on its bailout loans and economic turmoil, the International New York Times reported. The rare public statement by the Bank of Greece came on the eve of the latest meeting of European officials, aimed at quelling the escalating crisis.

A 13 billion pound mortgage portfolio put up for sale by the "bad bank" charged with winding down the assets of two failed British lenders has lured interest from several possible bidders, the group's boss said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. UK Asset Resolution (UKAR), which is selling off the loans of bailed-out Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, said in April it was selling the portfolio, named Granite, along with its mortgage servicing operations, aiming to speed up the repayment of taxpayers' money.