Finnish group Elcoteq , a key supplier to cellphone maker Nokia , said it was applying for insolvency proceedings after lenders blocked its bank accounts and refused a debt standstill, Reuters reported. Elcoteq said on Monday Danske Bank decided to accelerate its outstanding revolving credit facility, forcing it to apply for controlled management in Luxembourg to continue operations. The company, which assembles cellphones and set-top boxes, said in June it would not be able to repay the remaining amount of a revolving credit facility.

Eight European banks, including five from Spain, failed crucial EU stress tests, the bloc's financial regulator said on Friday, with lenders facing rising pressures from the eurozone debt crisis, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported on an Agence France-Presse story. Two Greek banks and one Austrian bank also failed to meet the European Banking Authority's new capital requirements, the regulator said in a statement after testing 91 banks.

Ireland's bailout package should be made more flexible to help the eurozone struggler recover faster from its crisis and ensure its return to debt markets, Europe's top economics official said in an opinion piece in an Irish newspaper, Reuters reported. In an article to be published in the Sunday Business Post, Olli Rehn called for the interest rates on Ireland's loans and the maturity of the debt to be lengthened. "Ireland provides hard evidence that the EU-IMF conditional financial support approach is working," Rehn, the EU's economic and monetary affairs commissioner, wrote.

The group representing Greece’s private creditors said Sunday that progress was being made in discussions on international banks’ involvement in the next Greek bailout and that talks would continue this week before a meeting of European leaders on Thursday, the International Herald Tribune reported. Charles Dallara, the managing director of the Institute for International Finance, an organization representing major global financial firms, said that “discussions are continuing and progress is being made.” Mr.

The state is facing a legal costs bill estimated at up to €7 million following property investor Paddy McKillen’s successful legal challenge to the proposed acquisition by the National Assets Management Agency of about €1.4 billion in loans of his companies, the Irish Times reported. Mr McKillen secured a legal costs order from a seven-judge Supreme Court against Nama yesterday as it emerged the agency has now decided not to acquire the loans that were at the centre of High and Supreme Court proceedings lasting 12 days and involving huge costs.

Even as the Italian Senate rushed through approval of a deficit-cutting austerity package on Thursday to fend off a sovereign debt crisis, doubts were growing about the staying power of the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the International Herald Tribune reported. The bill, which passed in a confidence vote by 161 to 135, moves to the lower house for final approval on Friday, where it is all but certain to pass. What happens afterward is far less clear. The center-left opposition has been stepping up calls for Mr.

The European Union's banking "stress tests," designed to bolster confidence in the Continent's financial system, are facing a last-minute scramble as regulators adjust the exam's terms and bankers and politicians criticize the process and lobby for changes, The Wall Street Journal reported. The European Banking Authority, the pan-EU regulator that is conducting the exercise, plans to announce the test results on Friday. The tests measure the abilities of 91 major banks in 21 European countries to withstand a sharply deteriorating economic environment.

The impact of the recession on families is reflected in cases brought to court, according to a new report, the Irish Times reported. The annual report of the Courts Service shows an increase in bankruptcies, orders for possession, judgments for recovery of debt and judgment mortgages. However, there has been a decline in cases involving companies, with a 9 per cent decrease in orders to wind up companies, a 6 per cent fall in applications to restrict directors and a 21 per cent drop in new cases admitted to the Commercial Court list in the High Court.

German retailer Tengelmann expects to exit its holding in Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea (A&P) when the U.S. grocery store chain emerges from bankruptcy protection, Reuters reported. "We hope that A&P can be led out of its insolvency. But we do not believe that we will be significant shareholders after the process ends," Tengelmann Chief Executive Karl-Erivan Haub told reporters on Thursday. Tengelmann, which owns about 38 percent of A&P, said last year it expected the company to be combined with another retailer in the long term.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said the euro zone and International Monetary Fund must quickly approve a second bailout for his country to avoid its economic reform plans collapsing, a German newspaper reported. "The current mood doesn't help us to get through this crisis," Papandreou told the Financial Times Deutschland, in a brief preview of an interview to be published in the paper's Thursday's edition, Reuters reported. "This uncertainty scares investors.