European leaders will try to convince Greeks and financial markets when they meet on Thursday and Friday that they have a workable plan to help Athens avoid a debt default and return to financial stability, Reuters reported. Using a mixture of arm-twisting and moral support, the leaders will tell Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou that they will release the latest 12 billion euros of an emergency aid package, helping Athens to avoid a potential mid-July default, as long as it commits itself to economic reform.

The Quinn family’s Swedish company is “hopelessly insolvent” and has no possibility of repaying massive loans owed to Anglo Irish Bank, lawyers for the bank told a Swedish court yesterday, the Irish Times reported. Quinn Investments Sweden has no more than 30,000 Swedish Krona (€3,277) in its coffers and lacks the assets to cover the 16 billion SEK (€1.8 billion) owed to the bank, Anglo’s lawyers said. Anglo wants a bankruptcy receiver appointed to Quinn Investments, the holding company for the family’s international properties in Russia, Sweden, Britain, Turkey and Ukraine.

Troubled Swedish carmaker Saab, owned by Netherlands-based Swedish Automobile , said on Tuesday it had offered a deal to suppliers over unpaid debts in an effort to get production restarted, Reuters reported. Saab said on Monday its Trollhattan factory in southern Sweden would be idle for two more weeks after having stood still for most of April and May because it could not pay its suppliers and ran out of parts.

Greece's prime minister survived a crucial confidence vote in Parliament, rallying his Socialist deputies and solidifying support for a package of tough budget cuts that European authorities have demanded as a prerequisite for more aid to the ailing country, The Wall Street Journal reported. Prime Minister George Papandreou, reeling from political pushback against those cuts, took a gamble by calling for the vote. To assuage some of the anger, he shuffled his cabinet last week and sidelined the finance minister identified with the measures. In a roll call, Mr.

Unlike their government, Greek banks were seen as well managed and prudent before the crisis. But they became victims of their government’s debt woes, severed from international lines of credit and able to borrow only from the European Central Bank, the International Herald Tribune reported. Now the banks complain that the E.C.B. is pressuring them to reduce their dependence on central bank funding, hurting not only the banks but Greek businesses and consumers who are unable to get credit. Alexandros Manos, managing director of Piraeus Bank, argues that the E.C.B.

Iceland's economy is on the mend after the 2008 collapse of its banking system, but the country needs to beef up regulation and oversight of financial firms further to avoid future problems, the OECD said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Iceland plunged into recession in 2009 after its biggest banks collapsed in the space of a few day when credit dried up globally. The government was powerless because banks' liabilities were eight times greater than the country's gross domestic product.

Greece will get its next quarterly installment of bailout money only if the country's Parliament passes a contentious package of budget measures, European finance ministers said after a two-day meeting in Luxembourg, The Wall Street Journal reported. They also made long-planned changes to the euro zone's bailout funds. The ministers deferred any final decision on the installment payment until early July, after the vote in Parliament, and showed modest signs of progress toward a broader agreement for a bigger package of aid to Greece for coming years.

Not for the first time during the slow-motion car crash that is the euro zone's fiscal crisis, policy makers are tying themselves in knots in an effort to minimize collateral damage, The Wall Street Journal Agenda blog reported. They fret over whether ratings agencies and other self-appointed market regulators will define investors' participation in a new Greek funding package as a default.

Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday the coalition government would press ahead with plans for public sector pension reform in face of warnings from union chiefs of the biggest wave of strikes in almost a century, Reuters reported. Union bosses have said many of Britain's 6.2 million public sector workers could take part in coordinated strikes later this year over the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition pension proposals.

European finance ministers meeting Sunday in Luxembourg moved toward approving a fresh quarterly installment of Greece's €110 billion ($157 billion) bailout loan, but they remained divided over the details of a far harder task—extending Greece a giant new package that would support it for years to come, The Wall Street Journal reported. Meanwhile, finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven industrialized countries held a conference call late Sunday to discuss the euro crisis, according to people familiar with the matter.