Building group Bowen’s British business owed almost €10 million to subcontractors before court-appointed administrators took control of the company, its latest figures show, the Irish Times reported. State assets agency Nama and the Bank of Ireland appointed Paul McCann of Grant Thornton as receiver to the key Bowen group companies last month on foot of a number of secured debts.

France, Italy, Spain and Belgium have banned all short selling of financial stocks for 15 days in response to sharp share price falls this week, but they failed to convince other regulators to go along with a European Union-wide prohibition, the Financial Times reported. The bans on the controversial practice where investors aim to profit from price falls will take effect on Friday morning. But other main markets, including the US and the UK, have said they have no plans to follow suit.

Prime Minister David Cameron blamed the worst riots in Britain for decades on street gang members and opportunistic looters and denied government austerity measures or poverty caused the violence in London and other major cities, Reuters reported. Cameron told an emergency session of parliament that police tactics had failed at the start of the rioting. Courts worked through the night to deal with hundreds of mostly young people arrested during the mayhem. "The fightback has well and truly begun," said the Conservative leader, in power for 15 months.

As U.S. and European sovereign-debt concerns menace some of the world's biggest financial institutions, their Japanese counterparts are seen as less vulnerable given their small exposure, The Wall Street Journal reported. But other potential problems are growing, and could eventually end in a cascade, some industry observers say. "Japanese banks' exposure to European sovereign debts is small, so even in a pessimistic scenario, the risk of losses is limited," said Akira Takai, an analyst at Daiwa Securities Capital Markets, in a recent report.

UK bank Lloyds has teamed up with Dublin company Green Property to help manage Irish commercial properties which have been put into receivership by the bank, the Irish Times reported. Green will offer property management services to receivers on assets in the €13 billion commercial property book at what was formerly Bank of Scotland (Ireland). It is estimated that properties supporting up to €1 billion of commercial loans in Lloyds’ Irish subsidiary could fall under Green’s management if receivers choose to avail of the company’s services.

With the sense of economic crisis deepening in Europe after the United States debt downgrade, investors have played Who’s Next with the shrinking list of nations that still hold the top rating of AAA. And their sights have landed on France, the International Herald Tribune reported. The head of the French central bank, Christian Noyer, leaves the Élysée Palace in Paris after a meeting with the heads of major French banks and President Nicolas Sarkozy.

New steps to save the euro are raising anxiety levels among Germany's influential economic policy establishment, which sees them as an existential threat to the principles that helped raise the country from the ashes of World War Two, Reuters reported. Many saw Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision last month to let the euro zone rescue fund buy the bonds of vulnerable member states on the open market as a step toward a "transfer union," in which Germans are forced to pay for the sins of others.

Greece's ambitious reform program suffered a double setback Wednesday after it emerged that talks with the country's creditors on a bond swap plan have stumbled and fresh data showed a sharp increase in the budget deficit, The Wall Street Journal reported. Citing poor private sector participation, officials said that a plan to swap Greek government debt maturing by 2020 into new, longer-dated securities, might be extended to include bonds falling due in 2022 or even 2024.

Some European suppliers are preparing to demand cash-strapped Swedish Automobile be declared bankrupt, hoping the threat will pressure the carmaker into paying debts, an auto industry group said on Wednesday. Car production at Saab, rescued from bankruptcy in early 2010 by Netherlands-based Swedish Automobile, ground to a standstill in April because suppliers who had not been paid refused to deliver components. Lars Holmqvist, head of the European Association of Automotive Suppliers, told Reuters that Spanish auto panels maker Matrici S.

Russian conglomerates Kaskol and RU-COM will increase their energy holdings by together acquiring Composite Technology Corp.'s assets out of its U.S. bankruptcy proceeding in a deal valued at more than $11 million, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The Russian companies' joint venture, called CTC Acquisition Corp., will pay $1 million in cash and take on the responsibility for at least $10.5 million of Composite Technology's liabilities, according to a purchase agreement filed Tuesday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana., Calif.