Even as the European banking crisis shows signs of easing, lenders across the Continent are engaging in a variety of maneuvers to avoid, or at least delay, coming to terms with potential problems lurking on their books, The Wall Street Journal reported. Some banks are concocting unorthodox structures designed to improve all-important capital ratios, without raising new capital or moving unwanted assets off their balance sheets.

Video games seller Game Group's British stores were sold to investment firm OpCapita on Sunday, safeguarding nearly 3,200 jobs, the collapsed retailer's administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said. The private equity firm, which bought electrical goods retailer Comet last year, will buy all 333 of Game's British shops that have remained open during its administration, Reuters reported. It will also seek to re-employ a small number of staff who previously worked at Game's head office but received redundancy notices last week, it said in a joint statement with PwC.

Euro-zone finance ministers on Friday agreed to boost the bloc's bailout lending limit to €700 billion ($930 billion), choosing the least ambitious option on the table for reinforcing its anticrisis "firewall," one some in Europe fear won't be enough to prevent a reawakening of the region's financial turmoil, The Wall Street Journal reported. After several months of relative calm, tensions are returning to the European government bond markets.

Europe’s long-running euro crisis may be cooling. But the economic distress it has left in its wake is pushing a rising tide of workers into precarious straits in France and across the European Union. Today, hundreds of thousands of people are living in campgrounds, vehicles and cheap hotel rooms. Millions more are sharing space with relatives, unable to afford the basic costs of living, the International Herald Tribune reported.

Thousands of protesters rallied in several Spanish cities as a nationwide strike disrupted public transportation and forced factory closures across the country, highlighting popular opposition to government austerity measures, The Wall Street Journal reported. The strike, called by Spain's two largest unions to protest a sweeping overhaul of labor laws, was mostly peaceful, marred by isolated clashes between police and demonstrators in some cities.

Eircom has applied for court protection to allow it to restructure its debt load, the Irish Times reported. A representative of the company told the High Court the firm was applying for examinership, a process that protects company assets from creditors for up to 100 days while a survival plan is worked on to keep the business afloat. The examinership is the largest in Irish corporate history. Under the proposals, Eircom’s gross debts would be reduced from about €4 billion currently to about €2.35 billion.

The Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), which is winding down Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide, has said it is in talks that could lead to it taking on residential mortgages from other banks, the Irish Times reported. Confirming for the first time that IBRC may take on non-core assets from other lenders, the bank said the talks were centred on repairing the financial system to allow banks to lend again.

British private investment firm OpCapita has submitted a renewed bid to acquire parts of video games retailer Game out of administration, a source familiar with the situation said, Reuters reported. The source said on Thursday OpCapita, which earlier this year acquired British electricals chain Comet from Kesa , was interested on taking on the 333 Game stores in Britain that remain trading. Game collapsed into administration on Monday after failing to pay its second-quarter rent bill.

A German-backed proposal to expand the size of the euro-zone bailout funds is gaining ground, officials tell us, ahead of a meeting of euro-zone finance ministers on Friday in Copenhagen that is expected to seal a deal, The Wall Street Journal Real Time Brussels reported. Under the favored option, the region’s bailout funds would rise temporarily to roughly €650 billion ($799 billion) by July.

European Central Bank action to shore up the eurozone financial system failed to prevent the region’s banks scaling back lending to the private sector again last month, but it did spur a surge in demand for government bonds, the Financial Times reported. The ECB has provided more than €1tn in three year loans to eurozone banks since Mario Draghi became its president late last year – a move which he argues averted a severe “credit crunch” across the 17-country region.