Lenders to UK waste manager Biffa are bracing themselves for a debt-for-equity restructuring if it is unable to sell certain divisions to reduce its 1-billion pound ($1.57 billion) debt, Reuters reported. Biffa is expected to breach loan covenants this year due to reduced waste volume on the back of lower consumption. . Its earnings will also be hit by a new UK landfill tax.

Property developer Patrick McKillen’s declaration that £660 million (€826 million) worth of debt on three London hotels could have been refinanced if more time had been given is “nonsense”, the National Asset Management Agency has argued. In the high court action in London, Mr McKillen’s legal team argued that Nama had acted unlawfully when it sold £660 million worth of debt secured on Claridge’s, the Berkeley and the Connaught to the billionaire Barclay brothers, the Irish Times reported.

Greece handed 18 billion euros (14.39 billion pounds) to its four biggest banks on Monday, the finance ministry said, allowing the stricken lenders to regain access to European Central Bank funding. The long-awaited injection - via bonds from the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund - will boost the nearly depleted capital base of National Bank, Alpha, Eurobank and Piraeus Bank.

Greece's radical left party has upended the country's politics with an idea as simple as it is seductive: Athens can renege on the deals it made in exchange for a bailout, and still remain in the euro. Greece's future, and possibly that of Europe's monetary union, may depend on how many Greeks buy into the idea, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Coalition of the Radical Left, known as Syriza, is competing with Greece's conservative New Democracy to become the biggest party in Parliament in June 17 elections that could send further shock waves through Europe.

Polish builder PBG has extended a deadline on a debt restructuring deal with its lenders and broadened its scope to include its financing needs over the next year, it said on Monday, Reuters reported. The engineering and construction group is among several Polish builders to run into trouble on infrastructure deals with razor-thin margins in an ambitious road-building programme ahead of the Euro 2012 soccer games Poland will co-host this summer. "The process of negotiations on granting and launching bridge financing by banks has been prolonged," PBG said.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called for a show of force from European authorities as his government sought ways to avoid tapping markets to fund the bailout of the nation’s third-biggest lender, Bloomberg reported. “Europe has to dissipate any doubts about the euro,” the premier told a hastily called news conference in Madrid yesterday.

European officials are stepping up contingency planning for a possible Greek exit from the euro zone, even as Europe's leaders struggled to overcome differences on how to resolve the currency bloc's crisis at a summit meeting, The Wall Street Journal reported. Emerging from Wednesday night's informal European Union summit, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said most leaders had backed issuing common debt, or euro-zone bonds, to help support troubled members. But Germany and others opposed them and demanded Greece do more.

The prospect of fresh action to boost the flagging British economy loomed larger on Thursday after official figures showed a steeper fall in activity than previously thought and the crisis-hit eurozone drifted towards a deeper slump, The Guardian reported. Labour seized on data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing that gross domestic product declined by 0.3% in the first three months of 2012 as evidence that Britain is ill-prepared to withstand a deterioration in the rest of Europe over the coming months.

The owner of German department store chain Karstadt, Nicolas Berggruen, is interested in buying insolvent drugstore chain Schlecker, a person close to the U.S.-German investor said on Thursday, Reuters reported. A creditor meeting is scheduled for Friday to decide over Schlecker's future and possibly pick a buyer for what's left of the chain, which has closed 2,000 of its outlets. Daily paper Stuttgarter Nachrichten earlier said Berggruen entered the sales process two weeks ago, bidding between 100 million and 500 million euros ($126-$630 million).

Struggling lender Dexia SA said it is in exclusive talks to sell its Turkish Denizbank AS unit to Russia's biggest bank, OAO Sberbank, as the Belgian-French bank continues to sell assets to shore up its balance sheet, The Wall Street Journal reported. No financial information was disclosed, but a person familiar with the talks said a deal could be worth between $3 billion and $4 billion and be "the biggest in Sberbank's history." The details are to be ironed out in the next two weeks, the person added. State-controlled Sberbank is Russia's oldest and largest bank.