French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde on Tuesday clinched the top job at the IMF, keeping the international lender in the hands of a European at a time of growing concern over a possible Greek debt default, Reuters reported. Lagarde will become the first woman to head the International Monetary Fund when her five-year term as managing director begins on July 5. She will find herself immediately immersed in efforts by the IMF and European Union to head off a Greek default that could touch off an international crisis.

It is too early to say what will finally emerge as a deal between European financial groups and governments. But there is a growing consensus that the proposal circulated by the French banking sector on Monday was a credible blueprint, the Financial Times reported. “The French proposals have catalysed the debate,” said Charles Dallara, managing director of the Institute of International Finance, which represents most global banks and helped organise the Rome talks.

Swedish Automobile NV Tuesday announced a partial sale and lease-back agreement on Saab Automobile's real-estate assets as the car maker continues its search for cash to pay workers and suppliers to enable it to restart production, The Wall Street Journal reported. A consortium of Swedish real estate investors, led by Hemfosa Fastigheter AB, will purchase 50.1% of the shares in Saab property for 255 million Swedish kronor ($39.6 million). Saab Automobile will enter into a lease agreement with Saab property for a duration of 15 years.

Debt-strapped Greece is about to hold an epic yard sale, The Wall Street Journal reported. For the taking: four wide-body Airbus jets, a state lottery, a state horse-racing concession and sports book, stakes in a casino, several ports, a national post office, two water companies, a nickel miner and smelter, a munitions maker, electricity and gas monopolies, a telecommunications operator, shares in a half dozen banks, hundreds of miles of roads, a defunct airport, old Olympic venues and thousands of acres of land, including magnificent stretches of Greece's famed coast.

A debt restructuring isn't an alternative option for Greece as the consequences of such an event on Europe's financial markets could dwarf the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, a key member of the European Central Bank's executive board said Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported. "A restructuring—that is often discussed in the case of Greece—constitutes absolutely no alternative" to adjustment and reform, warned Jürgen Stark, a hawkish German member of the ECB's board, according to the text of a speech given in Berlin.

Irish Life & Permanent will be effectively nationalised with the injection of up to €3.8 billion in State funds by the end of next month to meet the Central Bank’s capital bill, the company has said, the Irish Times reported. The company told shareholders in a circular published yesterday it proposed issuing up to €3.4 billion in ordinary shares to the Minister for Finance and a further €400 million in contingent capital, leaving the State with a shareholding of more than 99 per cent.

Britain is facing a tsunami of house repossessions as soon as interest rates start to rise, one of the country's leading bankers has warned. Richard Banks, the chief executive of UK Asset Resolution (UKAR), the body that runs the £80bn of mortgages bailed out by the taxpayer during the banking crisis, also said in an interview with the Guardian that the Labour government's pleas at the start of the crisis for lenders to keep families in their homes was forcing some homeowners further into debt.

Swedish Automobile NV on Monday secured another short-term lifeline when an unidentified Chinese company bought 582 Saab cars for €13 million ($18.4 million) in cash, money the company wants to use to pay employee wages and some of the unpaid bills it owes its suppliers, The Wall Street Journal reported. However, the news immediately drew skepticism from supplier organization FKG, which said it wouldn't be enough to cover both the wage bill and supplier payments and wouldn't allow Saab to restart car production. The financial situation has been growing steadily worse at Saab.

Struggling British women's fashion retailer Jane Norman has become the latest victim of a downturn in shopper spending on discretionary items, collapsing into administration, Reuters reported. A spokeswoman for business advisory firm Zolfo Cooper said on Monday it had been appointed administrator of the firm, which trades from over 200 stores and concessions in the UK and Ireland, employing over 1,600. Press reports have said British department store group Debenhams may be interested in buying the Jane Norman brand and residual stock.

Lloyds Banking Group’s exposure to the riskiest kind of mortgages is more than double that of any of its top five rivals in what is potentially a ticking time bomb for Britain’s largest high-street lender, the Financial Times reported. Data published last week by the Bank of England showed that loans representing more than a quarter of Lloyds’ mortgage book are worth at least 90 per cent of the property value they are secured against.