Much of Ireland has been riveted this summer by recordings of phone conversations from 2008 that revealed not only shocking levels of greed and bad breeding among some of the country’s top bankers, but a deliberate effort to snooker the government into bailing out the country’s banks by concealing the extent of their insolvency, The Washington Post reported.

Leading Hungarian tour operator Best Reisen Ltd, hit by big losses on holidays to Egypt and Tunisia, said on Friday it had gone bankrupt, leaving hundreds of passengers in Red Sea resorts in Egypt, Reuters reported. The company said it had financial deposits of 1.3 billion forints ($5.75 million) which would cover the costs of bringing passengers home and compensating clients with booked trips. "Best Reisen specialised in North African countries and the Arab spring did them no good," said Judit Molnar, vice chair of the association of Hungarian tour operators.

AIB is putting together a panel of receivers and insolvency experts to move in on heavily indebted small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and other commercial businesses with assets of value, the Independent reported. The bank is seeking tenders from insolvency experts who will take on the work on a fixed-fee basis. Much of the focus of the new drive will be on loans being managed by AIB on behalf of the State 'bad bank', Nama.

Haarlem, officially the best shopping city in the Netherlands, looks like many picturesque Dutch towns: a medieval church surrounded by a hedonistic cornucopia of pedestrian shopping streets. Normally those streets are filled with confident window-shoppers, but these are not normal times, and Dutch consumers are feeling anything but confident, the Financial Times reported. Household spending has been falling for three straight years, and it dropped again 2.4 per cent year on year in the second quarter, dragging the entire economy down with it.

The euro-zone economy is showing signs of sputtering to life, but doubts abound about whether growth can pick up. A big reason economists are skeptical is the huge cargo tethered to the currency bloc's rear bumper: trillions of euros in private-sector debt accumulated over the previous decade that policy makers have done little to address, The Wall Street Journal Brussels Beat blog reported. Deleveraging in the euro-zone's banking sector may prove to be one of the most powerful brakes on growth in the coming years.

Magyar Telecom BV, the owner of Hungarian telecommunications company Invitel, asked its bondholders to vote on a debt-for-equity swap today as the company seeks to reduce borrowings and attract new investment, Bloomberg reported. Magyar Telecom, controlled by Mid Europa Partners LLP, set an Aug. 15 deadline for responses to its restructuring proposal and has support from holders of as much as 65 percent of its notes, it said in an Aug. 13 statement. It’s preparing a scheme of arrangement, a U.K.

Solarworld AG Chief Executive Officer Frank Asbeck expects business to improve in the second half as last week’s deal to restructure Germany’s biggest solar-panel maker boosts customers’ confidence, Bloomberg reported. The agreement will see shareholders lose 95 percent of their holdings and bring in a 35 million-euro ($46 million) investment from Qatar Solar S.P.C., Asbeck said today in a letter to shareholders. The restructuring will be completed by the end of this year or early next year, he said. While the solar market remains challenging, the deal “sent out a positive signal,” he said.

Dissent within the Bank of England's interest-rate setting panel fueled investor doubts Wednesday over whether the central bank can stick to its new governor's pledge not to raise interest rates until joblessness in the U.K. falls sharply, The Wall Street Journal reported. New BOE Gov. Mark Carney, in his debut news conference last week, outlined a major shift in the central bank's policy framework, vowing to keep interest rates at record lows at least until the U.K. jobless rate falls to 7%. BOE officials predict such a drop could take until 2016.

Portugal emerged from 2½ years of recession last quarter largely because of a sharp rise in exports, but economists said further austerity measures required under the country's international bailout program may make the recovery short-lived, The Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product rose 1.1% in the second quarter compared with the first quarter but remained 2% below its level a year ago, according to a flash estimate Wednesday by the country's statistics agency. The economy hadn't registered growth since the final three months of 2010.

Britain is flirting with another runaway rise in house prices, according to a Reuters poll of economists, with a firm majority putting the chances at 50-50 or higher over the next five years. Despite those concerns, there was a clear consensus that the recent improvement in data heralds a sustainable economic recovery for the UK, which has struggled over the last three years to escape recession.