The euro zone's bailout fund should be allowed to lend to help finance the closure of banks in the bloc, a proposal prepared for euro zone finance ministers showed on Monday, Reuters reported. European countries are seeking to reach a deal before the end of the year on how to close failing lenders, as part of an ambitious plan to create a banking framework and fix broken banks, whose problems have festered since the financial crisis.

For a year and a half, Antonis Samaras has kept Greece’s bailout programme broadly on track despite his coalition government’s shrunken parliamentary majority and resistance within his cabinet to implementing tough structural reforms, the Financial Times reported. For the Greek premier, stern admonitions from Angela Merkel, German chancellor, and other EU leaders that Athens must work harder to fulfil its obligations to international lenders have given way to recognition of the “sacrifices made by the Greek people” as fiscal targets are finally met.

Eastern Germany's savings banks have written down their stake in stricken Landesbank Berlin (LBB) to 1 euro, the head of the association representing them said. "We have drawn a line under it in the hope that we're through now," OSV President Michael Ermrich told Reuters, adding that he did not expect a dividend from LBB in the next two to three years. On Friday, sources had told Reuters that Germany's savings banks would have to shoulder as much as 1.2 billion euros ($1.6 billion) in further writedowns on LBB, which is being dismantled into a savings bank and a real estate business.

Aer Lingus is threatening legal action if Siptu goes ahead with a strike in the latest twist in the ongoing row over the €780 million hole in the pension fund that it operates jointly with Dublin Airport Authority (DAA), the Irish Times reported. Siptu is set to begin balloting members in the airline and airport operator next week for industrial action as the trade union says there is growing frustration over the delay in resolving the dispute.

The fight over defunct Nortel Networks' $7.5 billion in cash will be decided in joint U.S.-Canadian court hearings and not in arbitration, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia upheld a bankruptcy court ruling in March that there was never an agreement to use arbitration to divide the pile of cash among various Nortel estates around the world. Nortel sought protection from creditors in courts around the world in 2009 and its businesses were quickly sold, reducing a once-global corporate giant to little more than a pile of cash.

ATU Auto-Teile-Unger, the German car repair and tire chain owned by KKR & Co., will be taken over by lenders following a debt restructuring, Bloomberg reported. Shareholders and a majority of senior bondholders agreed to write off more than 600 million euros ($816 million) of debt to cut cash interest costs by more than 90 percent, Weiden, Germany-based ATU said in a statement today. The company was downgraded to ‘selective default’ by Standard & Poor’s after the deal was announced.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has invited euro zone officials to a meeting in Berlin on Friday in a bid to come closer to a solution on a planned European resolution mechanism to deal with troubled banks, a German newspaper said on Friday. Business daily Handelsblatt cited unnamed EU diplomats and German government sources as saying Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem, French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, ECB Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen and European Union regulation chief Michel Barnier were all expected to attend.

British film and computer game rental chain Blockbuster said it is to close 62 stores and lay off 427 employees and warned its remaining 91 stores and 808 staff could face the same fate, Reuters reported. Private equity firm Gordon Brothers Europe, which purchased Blockbuster for an undisclosed sum in March, put it into administration on Nov. 11, when it was trading from 264 stores, employing 2,000. Administrator Moorfields Corporate Recovery said on Thursday it had not received any acceptable offers for the business.

The Irish government said Wednesday the sale at a profit of a huge investment in Bank of Ireland that was made at the height of the debt crisis will boost confidence in the country as it prepares to exit its international bailout in the coming weeks, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Unemployment in France rose to its highest level in nearly 16 years in the third quarter, dealing a fresh blow to President François Hollande who has pledged to bring unemployment down by the end of the year, The Wall Street Journal reported. Unemployment in the euro zone's second-largest economy rose to 10.9% in the third quarter, from 10.8% in the second, according to data published Thursday by national statistics agency Insee. The rate hasn't fallen since the beginning of 2011, bringing joblessness in France to a level not seen since the beginning of 1998.