Multinationals will face a penalty tax if they are found to have artificially moved profits out of the United Kingdom to lower tax jurisdictions, such as the Republic, the British chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne has said, the Irish Times reported. Delivering his autumn statement to the house of commons, Mr Osborne, who is bidding to bring in £5 billion-a-year more from curbing tax avoidance, said he was determined to ensure that multi-nationals “pay their fair share”. “That’s not fair to other British firms. It’s not fair to the British people either.

When the European Banking Authority, the European Union banking regulator, recently released an opinion indicating that a number of global banks had wrongly classified some of their complex new bonus structures, perhaps in violation of European law, many of the banks immediately scrambled to reach another regulator — a few blocks away. That regulator, Britain’s Prudential Regulatory Authority, had already approved some of the pay structures, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported.

Four months before he aims to become prime minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras is using the example of Germany’s post-World War II debt relief to bolster his case for a writedown on his country’s liabilities toward euro area member states and the European Central Bank, Bloomberg News reported. “While generosity was extended to Germany, Germany refuses to extend the same generosity,” the 40-year-old opposition leader said in a speech in Athens today, referring to a 1953 deal to write off 50 percent of some of Germany’s external debt.

Property developer Sean Dunne has thrown in the towel on his attempt to walk away from about €700 million in debts through the US bankruptcy courts, the Irish Times reported. In a major victory for the National Asset Management Agency, his biggest creditor, Mr Dunne has abandoned his bid to seek a fresh financial start.

Dutch sports-car maker Spyker NV said Tuesday it has filed for a financial restructuring in a Dutch court, seeking protection from creditors as it tries to resolve liquidity problems, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a statement, the company said it is seeking financing “arranged by independent financiers” to continue operations and pay wages. “Over the past few years, Spyker has faced a number of serious difficulties and challenges resulting from, among others, the legacy of the F1 era and the acquisition of Saab Automobile AB,” Victor R.

Standard and Poor's said it would not expect a big increase in sovereign defaults if the International Monetary Fund adopted a plan to force states to restructure their debts before receiving IMF aid, Reuters reported. The international lender proposed the change in June, in part as a result of its experience in Greece, where it agreed to bail out the euro zone country without imposing losses on private creditors, before having to do a U-turn.

German airline Lufthansa says it has cancelled about half of its flights after pilots went on strike in an ongoing dispute over retirement benefits, the International New York Times reported. The airline, Germany's largest, said Monday that 1,350 of its 2,800 flights scheduled through the strike's end Tuesday at midnight have been cancelled, affecting 150,000 passengers. The strike was primarily focused on Lufthansa's inner-Europe flights on Monday but was to be extended to long-haul flights Tuesday.

A dispute over whether bankrupt developer Seán Dunne validly transferred various property assets to his wife Gayle, including a hotel in South Africa, is to be fast-tracked by the Commercial Court, the Irish Times reported. Mr Dunne has debts of up to €700 million and Chris Lehane, the official administering his bankruptcy, has brought proceedings against Gayle Dunne seeking to set aside purported agreements under which Mr Dunne allegedly transferred his interest in a number of properties in Ireland and South Africa to his wife.

Thousands of French company chiefs took the streets on Monday in a rare protest against what they see as excessive taxes and red tape strangling activity in the euro zone’s second largest economy, the Irish Times reported. The protests in Paris and the southwestern city of Toulouse are the first in a week of demonstrations organised by employer groups before the December 10th unveiling of a law President Francois Hollande’s government hopes will boost investment and jobs.

As investigators sift through the wreckage of Banco Espírito Santo SA, their focus is expanding beyond the alleged fraud and accounting problems that doomed the large Portuguese lender, the Wall Street Journal reported today. They also are looking into whether the bank was involved in money-laundering activities in multiple countries, according to people familiar with the investigations.