Manganese Bronze, maker of London's black taxi, said it is set to appoint administrators after failing to secure funding needed to survive, putting hundreds of British jobs at risk, Reuters reported. Manganese Bronze, whose taxis have been on British streets since 1948, had been in talks with its largest shareholders, including China's Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd, to secure a last-minute bailout. "The issue here was not a lack of opportunity around the quantum of support being offered," Chief Executive John Russell told Reuters on Monday.

Tens of thousands of protesters marched through London on Saturday calling for an end to public spending cuts and tax rises launched by a government they accuse of elitism and ignorance about the plight of recession-hit voters, Reuters reported. Blowing horns and whistles, demonstrators streamed past the Houses of Parliament behind a banner declaring "Austerity is Failing", and called on Prime Minister David Cameron to do more to revive Britain's struggling economy.

The European Union summit that ended Friday suggested Germany and France, always awkward partners in managing the three-year-old euro crisis, are increasingly at odds over how to resolve it, The Wall Street Journal reported. The summit produced a tortuous compromise between the currency bloc's two biggest nations over the creation of a new euro-zone banking supervisor, but it also brought simmering disagreements between Berlin and Paris into the open.

Euro zone officials are exploring ways to solve one of the thorniest issues they face: how to ensure distressed banking assets are dealt with at a national level while also breaking the link between indebted governments and their banks, Reuters reported. EU leaders agreed in June that the region's bailout fund, the ESM, should be allowed to directly recapitalize banks once a single euro zone supervisor is in place, probably during 2013. Such recapitalizations would, the leaders said at the time, break the "vicious circle between banks and sovereigns".

At first glance, the shop on a nondescript street in this chaotic capital looks standard-issue military, The Washington Post reported. Fatigues. Camouflage. Hunting gear. Deeper inside, the political message emerges. Black T-shirts emblazoned with modified swastikas — the symbol of the far-right Golden Dawn Party — are on sale.

Banks must face up to the issue of restructuring rather than just deferring problem SME loans, the deputy governor of the Central Bank said yesterday, the Irish Times reported. Matthew Elderfield also warned an audience of compliance officers that the Central Bank will conduct a third series of stress tests on Irish banks over the next year to satisfy itself that they were now sufficiently capitalised for the medium term.

Tens of thousands of Greeks joined a second nationwide strike in three weeks on Thursday, moving to bring the country to a near standstill in a bid to show European Union leaders meeting in Brussels that new austerity cuts being demanded by Greece’s lenders would cripple society and further depress the economy, the International Herald Tribune reported. Protest rallies began peacefully but were disrupted when demonstrators broke away from the crowd near Syntagma Square outside Parliament and threw rocks, bottles and firebombs at the police, who responded with tear gas.

Germany is proposing to toughen Greece’s access to international aid by setting up an escrow account outside its reach to guarantee payments of interest and debt to creditors, a government official said, Bloomberg reported. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who suggested that Greece will get more aid even while struggling to meet the conditions, wants a lasting solution to the country’s debt crisis to restore confidence in financial markets, the official, who asked not to be named, told reporters.

European Union leaders took a big stride towards establishing a single banking supervisor for the euro zone, striking a deal under which the bloc's rescue fund could start recapitalising ailing banks next year, a French government source said, Reuters reported. The source told reporters at an EU summit that all 6,000 banks in the single currency area would come under European Central Bank supervision by 2014, but most day-to-day oversight would be delegated to national bodies.

Spain's debt costs retreated further from their dangerous summer highs Thursday, helped by favorable ratings news and growing hopes that the government will request a bailout, The Wall Street Journal reported. A Spanish bond auction attracted solid demand after Moody's surprised investors late Tuesday by leaving Spain's investment grade rating unchanged. It was widely expected to relegate it to junk status. Moody's pinned its decision on the increasing likelihood of the country asking for financial assistance from the European Union.