Europe

As two French banks struggle to weather the financial turbulence, Paris has decided to accelerate their merger, take a controlling stake in the combined company and install a management team of its own, the International Herald Tribune reported. Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said Monday that the French government would inject up to €5 billion, or $6.4 billion, into the bank that will be formed from the merger of Caisse d'Épargne and Banque Populaire, through the purchase of bonds that could be converted into shares.

The number of insolvencies in Romania is likely to exceed 20,000 in 2009 from 14,500 a year earlier as a repercussion of the global financial crisis, the National Union of Insolvency Practitioners (ANPIR) forecast. Around 1,600 cases of insolvency were recorded in January from 1,000 in the same month of the previous year, ANPIR president Arin Octav Stanescu reported. Debt recovery fell to 2.0 million euros in January from a monthly average of 35-40 million euros in 2007 and 2008.

The German government distanced itself on Monday from any commitment to Opel's future, saying it would wait for the ailing automaker to present a business plan before considering state guarantees. Opel, the German unit of General Motors, needs some €3.3 billion ($4.15 billion) to keep afloat through to the end of 2011, a source at the carmaker told Reuters on Friday.

World stock markets fell sharply Friday as the selling pressure on Wall Street was expected to continue at the open later amid pessimism about the ability of governments to prevent the deepest global economic downturn in generations, the Associated Press reported. Investors in Asia and Europe found few reasons to wade into the market after the Dow Jones industrial average breached the levels it touched in November, when global equities went into a tailspin as the financial crisis gathered steam.

General Motors's European brands are near collapse, with Germany's Opel in need of substantially more funding and Saab reported to be asking for $590 million from the Swedish government to help it restructure, Reuters reported. Filing for protection from creditors on Friday, Saab said it would present a reorganisation proposal within three weeks while court filings revealed that it estimated its losses in 2008 and 2009 at around 3 billion Swedish crowns ($340.1 million).

The combination of government bailouts and falling tax revenue combined Thursday to show the perilous state of the U.K.'s balance sheet, The Wall Street Journal reported. The country's Office of National Statistics said two bailed-out banks--Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and Lloyds Banking Group PLC--have been classified as public-sector entities, moving as much as £1.5 trillion ($2.136 trillion) of liabilities to the country's balance sheet. Meanwhile, the U.K. Treasury reported that tax receipts for January, usually a bumper month, dropped 10% from a year ago to £53.8 billion.

General Motors Europe said on Wednesday it was prepared to discuss partnerships or outside investment for its Opel unit as pressure mounted on the government in Berlin to help rescue the German brand, Spiegel Online reported. But Chancellor Angela Merkel said Opel must first present a clear restructuring plan before her government can consider giving assistance. GM Europe's United States parent company on Tuesday night announced plans to reduce its global workforce by 47,000 jobs this year and to cut five additional American plants by 2012.

Borse Dubai, a government-owned exchanges group, is expected to close a $2.5 billion loan today, a vote of support for the emirate amid fears that the commercial hub of the Gulf could default, the Financial Times reported. The company, which controls Dubai's two equity markets and has stakes in the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, needs to pay off a $3.4 billion (€2.7 billion, £2.4 billion) loan next week, the first major test in 2009 of Dubai's ability to refinance $20 billion in loans that mature this year. Dubai's globalised economy has been hit hard by the credit crunch.

The German government is set to adopt a law allowing it to temporarily nationalise troubled banks through the seizure of shares, according to a draft text obtained by Agence France-Presse Wednesday. The law is seen paving the way for the total nationalisation of stricken Germany property lender Hypo Real Estate (HRE), which would be the first time in modern German history the state has taken control of a bank. Nationalising banks "is only permissible when there are no other reasonable legal and economic solutions available to safeguard financial market stability," the draft says.

General Motors Co. is trying to line up $6 billion in financial support from five governments in addition to the U.S. federal aid outlined in its restructuring plan late Tuesday, Dow Jones Newswires reported. The U.S. automaker said it is in talks with authorities in Germany, the U.K., Sweden, Canada and Thailand to secure the aid by March 31, in line with a U.S. government deadline for continuing and extending support to keep the company out of bankruptcy protection.