Spanish gaming group Codere said on Thursday it is seeking protection from creditors and starting talks to avoid insolvency, after struggling to keep up with debt payments in recent months because of higher tax bills and other costs, Reuters reported. The company is the latest in Spanish to run into trouble even as the country slowly emerges from recession, with bankruptcies handled in court in 2013 up 15 percent from the year before, according to official data. Codere's problems, however, stem mainly from its overseas businesses.

Latvia’s leaders and the European Union have hailed the Baltic state’s adoption of the euro, amid widespread public fears over possible price rises and the future of the single currency, the Irish Times reported. As fireworks erupted over Latvia’s capital Riga to mark the start of 2014, a new €10 note was pulled from a bank machine by acting prime minister Valdis Dombrovskis, who has been praised by the EU for sticking to painful austerity that restored Latvia to growth after a crippling recession.

The UK arm of the business operated by Irish builder Gerry Gannon – whose Irish loans are being managed by Nama – returned to profit in 2012 after securing debt write-offs and the transfer of bank loans, the Irish Times reported. Gannon Homes (UK) Ltd recorded a profit of £6.875 million (€8.3 million) after assigning the company’s bank loans and overdrafts totalling £24.9 million to third-party investors and writing off £1 million owed by the firm to Irish-based Gannon Homes Ltd.

When Brazilian oil firm OGX tried to tap bond markets for $2 billion in 2011, investors were ready to hand it $5.5 billion. Two years on, OGX is in default and the debt trades at less than 10 cents of its original face value, Reuters reported. The spectre of such defaults spreading across emerging markets has not yet dimmed investor enthusiasm for the corporate debt sector, which saw record-high bond sales of $330 billion-plus in 2013 and more than 150 first-time borrowers.

Chancellor Angela Merkel will tell Germans their fate is so closely entwined with the European Union that it is imperative to come up with answers on how to permanently resolve the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis, Reuters reported. In an advance text of the traditional New Year's Eve address that she will deliver on Tuesday evening, Merkel said Germany had a lot of work to do to maintain its own economic strength.

The Spanish government is hoping to put the country’s creaking pension system back on sounder financial footing this week, with the launch of a pension reform that places tight curbs on how far payments to Spain’s 9m elderly people can rise in the coming years and decades, the Financial Times reported. The reform, due to enter into force on January 1, forms a key plank in the broader structural reform programme that has dominated Mariano Rajoy’s first two years as prime minister.

Brian Harvey, founder of business support firm Siteserv, will become chairman of Siac, the distressed construction company, once a rescue deal is agreed with its banks, the Irish Times reported. Mr Harvey has to secure a deal by January 30th, the date Siac’s court-ordered bankruptcy protection expires. Siac chief executive Martin Maher will remain in situ following agreement being reached with Siac’s three banks – Bank of Ireland, Bank of Scotland Ireland and KBC.

The family of former billionaire Seán Quinn are preparing to challenge the constitutionality of the IBRC Act to prevent the sale of their assets to a third party or the transfer of their loans into the National Asset Management Agency. The Quinn family and their legal advisers are, according to an informed source, focusing their attention on section 12 of the IBRC Act, which relates to “the sale or transfer of any asset or liability by IBRC”.

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, the bailed-out Italian bank, will delay a 3 billion-euro ($4.1 billion) stock sale until at least May from the first quarter after its biggest shareholder demanded a postponement, Bloomberg News reported. The bank’s investors backed the delayed rights offer at an extraordinary shareholder meeting in Siena on Dec. 28, according to Monte Paschi Chairman Alessandro Profumo. The vote ends a clash between the lender and its main shareholder over the timing of the offering.

French President Francois Hollande received approval from the country’s constitutional court to proceed with his plan to tax salaries above 1 million euros at 75 percent for this year and next, Bloomberg News reported. Under Hollande’s proposal, companies will have to pay a 50 percent duty on wages above 1 million euros ($1.4 million). In combination with other taxes and social charges, the rate will amount to 75 percent of salaries above the threshold, the court wrote in a decision published today.