Creditors of insolvent German aluminium plant Voerde Aluminium voted to extend production to the end of next year while the search for a buyer continues, a spokesman for Voerde's insolvency administrator said on Monday, Reuters reported. The Voerde smelter, which makes about 10 percent - or 115,000 tonnes - of Germany's yearly aluminium output a year, declared insolvency in May 2012. The plant in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia employs about 280 staff.

Alitalia, the Italian national airline that has made a profit only a few times in its 67-year history, once again risks collapsing as the government scrambles to find investors willing to rescue its problem child, Reuters reported. Rome offered a financial lifeline to Alitalia through the state-owned post office, but the plan depends on private shareholders ploughing more money into what many investors regard as a corporate lost cause.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s Help to Buy plan to aid home buyers is the wrong policy for Britain, economists said, adding to criticism of an initiative that was ramped up just this week. Two thirds of 31 economists described the measure as “bad,” according to a Bloomberg News survey published today. The prime minister this month accelerated the second phase of the program, which gives people the chance to buy a home with a down payment of as little as 5 percent. The new phase of the plan has heightened criticism it may fuel a bubble in Britain.

Anglo Irish Bank and its successor Irish Bank Resolution Corporation overcharged customers by an estimated $1.6 billion (€1.2 billion) and continued to overcharge since the Government liquidated the bank in February, a forensic banking specialist has claimed in a US court, the Irish Times reported. The expert witness made the claim in a legal challenge taken against IBRC’s application for bankruptcy protection in a court in Delaware by developer John Flynn and related parties who claim they were overcharged $11 million on loans of about $200 million with the bank.

Ireland’s corporate tax regime and the Government’s claim for further bank aid from Europe has been sucked into talks on the formation of the next German government, the Irish Times reported. In discussions with German chancellor Angela Merkel, the opposition Social Democratic party has set its face against using the ESM permanent bailout fund to provide capital directly to Irish banks.

Will Europe be third time lucky with the European Central Bank’s forthcoming asset quality review (AQR) of 130 banks? With the improvement in periphery sovereign spreads and bank valuations since the ECB announced its outright monetary transaction programme, the goalposts for judging success have shifted, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. The exercise is less a case of shoring up confidence in a collapsing banking system. Instead, a successful exercise must be used to kick-start a broader private debt restructuring effort.

For people in the airline industry, there’s a certain financial deja vu around Italian flag carrier Alitalia. The pattern plays like this: When the airline runs into a cash crunch, government officials, investors, and employees howl, a rescue package is assembled, and the company lives to fly another day. Fast-forward three or four years and repeat the cycle, Bloomberg reported. That’s where the company is as it heads into Thursday’s shareholder meeting, by which time Italy’s leaders are expected to have decided what measures are needed to keep the airline from collapsing.

In an interview on Wednesday morning's edition of the Latvijas Neatkariga televizija (LNT) news program "900 Seconds", Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis (Unity) said that the insolvency of financially troubled metallurgical company Liepajas metalurgs cannot be ruled out, informs LETA/Nozare.lv., The Baltic Course reported.

Loss-making Italian airline Alitalia risks having to file for bankruptcy if it fails to agree a deal for a capital increase in the next couple of weeks, a government source said on Tuesday. Alitalia needs about 500 million euros ($680 million) to stay in business and invest in a new turnaround strategy, analysts have said, after accumulating losses of more than 1 billion euros and debt of a similar size since being rescued from bankruptcy in 2009.

Dublin has won approval from its bailout masters to ease back on €3.1bn in planned austerity measures in its 2014 budget as long as it meets existing deficit targets in its programme, the Financial Times reported. The European Commission said on Tuesday that Ireland’s latest plan to implement €2.5bn in tax rises and spending cuts next year, rather than €3.1bn originally agreed with Ireland’s international lenders, “provided a sound basis for taking forward the necessary consolidation”.