Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s Kuban Airlines, the country’s 14th biggest, declared bankruptcy and ceased flying today after running up debt and breaching federal regulations, Bloomberg reported. “The main reasons for stopping the airline’s operations are the difficult financial situation and failure to comply with a number of provisions mandated by new federal aviation rules,” Krasnodar-based Kuban Airlines said in a statement on its website. The carrier filed for bankruptcy at the Krasnodar Region Arbitration Court.

The Greek government is on course to receive a long-delayed €34.4bn aid payment after it fell only just short of its target in a bond buyback programme intended to wipe about €20bn from Athens’ sovereign debt pile, the Financial Times reported. According to people briefed on the transaction, Greece on Tuesday night had received offers from private investors to sell €32bn in bonds back to Athens for an average of 33.5 cents on the euro, in essence agreeing to a 66.5 per cent voluntary loss on their holdings.

US and UK regulators will unveil the first cross-border plans to deal with failing global banks on Monday, outlining proposals to force shareholders and creditors on both sides of the Atlantic to take losses and to ensure sufficient capital exists in the banks’ headquarters to protect taxpayers. Writing in the Financial Times, Martin Gruenberg, chairman of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England, say this represents the first concrete steps to end the “too big to fail” problem of large international banks.

Italian companies led an increase in the cost of insuring European debt after the collapse of Prime Minister Mario Monti’s government, while sales of corporate bonds slowed. Credit-default swaps on Enel SpA jumped 31 basis points to 246, UniCredit SpA climbed 30 to 325 and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA rose 29 to 304, while Telecom Italia SpA was 15 higher at 292, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Rome-based utility Enel SpA’s bonds were the worst performers in Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Euro Non-Financial Index of corporate securities.

UK Coal, Britain's biggest remaining coal miner, said it had avoided an imminent debt default and the closure of operations after completing a major debt restructuring deal with shareholders. But the company, which on Monday changed its name to Coalfield Resources, warned that some mines may need to close unless they lowered costs which rose by over a third between 2005 and 2010. "If (operators) run these mines well, they've got a future for the next decade.

The billionaire Barclay brothers, who are battling property developer Patrick McKillen for control of three London luxury hotels, have made repeated bids to buy his €300 million in personal debt held by Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, the Irish Times reported. Under the three-part offer, the brothers would pay €150 million for IBRC-held debts on Mr McKillen’s stake in the Berkeley, Connaught and Claridge’s hotels; £50 million for security on other debts, along with offering to return to IBRC 90 per cent of all other debts recovered from Mr McKillen.

It has no direct experience of supervision, no dedicated staff for the job, and faces outright hostility from some of its putative charges. Other than that, the European Central Bank is ideally placed to take over the supervision of 6,000 banks in the eurozone, the Financial Times reported.

There is no shortage of current candidates for the uncoveted title Sick Man of Europe: Greece, obviously, since it's in the midst of a deep depression and has just defaulted on its debts for a second time in a year via its deeply discounted debt buyback; Portugal and Ireland, since they are still subject to euro-zone bailouts; Spain, where unemployment is running at over 25%; Italy, whose economy has barely grown for 20 years and whose dysfunctional politics have returned to center stage now that former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has withdrawn his party's support for Mario Monti's govern

Greece is near to reaching its target in a buyback of sovereign debt that will unlock aid from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, according to a Greek government official, Bloomberg reported. The amount offered in the buyback of Greece’s bonds is close to 30 billion euros, the official at the Finance Ministry said on condition of anonymity, referring to the face value of the securities. The transaction went “very well,” Prime Minister Antonis Samaras told reporters in Munich late Saturday after meeting leaders of the German state of Bavaria.

Germany’s economy may be skidding towards recession, the Bundesbank has warned, after it cut its 2013 growth forecast from 1.6 per cent to almost 0.4 per cent, the Irish Times reported. Europe’s largest economy will grow just 0.7 per cent this year, the central bank forecast, with contraction in the fourth quarter and likely stagnation in the first quarter of next year. The bank attributed the slowdown to a growing chill in the country’s important export sector.