Germany's largest power producer RWE will explore a split of its businesses if the sector's crisis intensifies, Chief Executive Peter Terium said, keeping open the option of a drastic overhaul similar to rival E.ON. Germany's utilities have seen their profits and share prices tumble as they grapple with a restructuring of the energy sector that has promoted solar and wind generation at the expense of their gas-fired power stations. "We want our company, RWE, to remain active in all parts of the value chain," he told shareholders at the group's annual general meeting on Thursday.

The slump in oil prices looks set to claim its highest-profile victim after a North Sea drilling firm warned it was facing collapse unless it can bring in urgent funding, The Scotsman reported. Trap Oil, which is quoted on London’s Alternative Investment Market, said yesterday it was “highly likely” to run out of cash within three months as a result of “depressed” Brent crude prices, which have tumbled by about half since last summer. The company’s only producing asset is the Athena oil field, in which it has a 15 per cent stake.

The home province of defunct lender Hypo Alpe Adria, Carinthia, is asking Vienna for financial support, saying it will run out of money by the beginning of June without external help, Reuters reported. Carinthia provided debt guarantees for years to fuel Hypo's rapid expansion before the practice was stopped in 2007, but the last ones do not expire until around 2017. With an annual budget of 2.2 billion euros ($2.36 billion), Carinthian officials have said the province cannot honour nearly 11 billion euros of backing for Hypo debt that creditors facing a "haircut" could demand.

Deutsche Bank said on Wednesday that it would incur 1.5 billion euros, or $1.6 billion, in costs from legal proceedings as reports surfaced that the bank was set to accept a record penalty for its involvement in a plan to rig the benchmark rates used to set trillions of dollars in interest rates, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported.

The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), which manages Ireland’s national debt, was not consulted by the government about the September 2008 bank guarantee, despite two of its most senior officials being in Government Buildings on the night the decision was made. This emerged in evidence given to the Oireachtas banking inquiry by Brendan McDonagh, the current chief executive of Nama, the National Asset Management Agency. Mr McDonagh was the NTMA’s director of finance at the time of the guarantee.

Britain’s biggest retailer Tesco posted the worst annual loss in its 96-year history on Wednesday after writing down the value of its stores by £4.7 billion, the Irish Times reported. Also hurt by an accounting scandal and sliding sales due to pressure from discounters and a brutal price war the supermarket made a statutory pre-tax loss of £6.38 billion (€8.9bn) in the year to February 28th. The grocer, which was recently overtaken by Supervalu as the largest supermarket in Ireland, announced a 6.3 per cent fall in sales here over this period, with full-year sales falling to €2.6bn.

Russia’s economy contracted 2 per cent last quarter, prime minister Dmitry Medvedev said, saying the country faced unprecedented challenges from a plunge in oil prices and sanctions imposed over Ukraine, the Irish Times reported. The downturn was “most acute” at end-2014 and the start of this year, Mr Medvedev told lawmakers in Moscow. The decline in gross domestic product is the first since a contraction in 2009. The economy of the world’s largest energy exporter is entering a recession after an almost 50 per cent crash in oil prices and the ruble’s worst crisis since 1998.

Bookmaker Ladbrokes Ireland, is seeking High Court protection from its creditors and warns it will have to cut jobs in a bid to rescue the loss-making business, the Irish Times reported. London-listed Ladbrokes, said on Tuesday that the High Court has appointed Ken Fennell as interim examiner to three Irish subsidiaries, Ladbroke (Ireland), Ladbroke Leisure and Dara Properties. The court has also granted them protection, effectively barring creditors from enforcing any debts against the three companies for up to three months.

Scotland would need to make “substantial” tax rises or spending cuts if it won full control over taxation and spending, a respected think-tank has warned, undermining claims by the Scottish National party it would be able to bring austerity to an end, the Financial Times reported. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated that a Scottish government could face a hole of up to £10bn if it were given responsibility to balance its books over the course of the next parliament. This is equivalent to nearly 5 per cent of Scottish gross domestic product.

The European Central Bank has urged the Central Bank of Ireland to accelerate the sale of sovereign bonds it holds after Anglo Irish Bank’s collapse, the Irish Times reported. The ECB welcomed moves by Dame Street to dispose of the bonds held after the Government’s move in 2013 to liquidate Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, Anglo’s successor, and scrap promissory notes issued to fund its public rescue. In its 2014 annual report, however, the ECB said the Irish authorities should speed up the process.