Deutsche Telekom AG and Vivendi SA Wednesday settled a years-long legal battle over Polish mobile-phone operator Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa, or PTC, giving the German company sole ownership and freeing up more cash for Vivendi to spend on buying out minority stakes in its domestic subsidiaries, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Under the settlement, Deutsche Telekom will pay another EUR1.4 billion ($1.9 billion) in total to Vivendi and Polish conglomerate Elektrim SA, which as a result of the payment will exit bankruptcy proceedings, giving Deutsche Tekekom 100% ownership.

Leading German biodiesel producer EOP Biodiesel AG said on Tuesday it had declared insolvency, Reuters reported. The company said in a statement it had been unable to reach agreement with its banks about finance. EOP produces 132,000 tonnes of biodiesel annually at a plant in Pritzwalk in eastern Germany. In October, the company stopped biodiesel production following damage to a gear unit at its oil mill. Read more.

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said it would have been "galling" to have paid €40 million in bonuses to AIB staff at a time when the Government was asking everyone in the country to make sacrifices, the Irish Times reported. Mr Lenihan said this morning he had written to AIB yesterday informing it that further investment by the taxpayer was conditional on the non-payment of any bonuses, no matter when they may have been earned. He said using taxpayers' funding to pay the bonuses was "unacceptable".

Officials running the European insolvency proceedings of Nortel Networks Corp. are threatening to sue Nortel's U.S. unit for allegedly stripping value from the company's European divisions and diverting it to other areas of the company, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. In a filing with the court overseeing the bankruptcy of the U.S. unit, the court-appointed administrators responsible for Nortel's European units say they need to beat the clock to begin legal action in Ireland and Britain. Time may run out as soon as Dec.

Germany's Schiesser AG said Monday a relevant local district court has approved its insolvency plan, removing the last obstacle to the company's planned initial public offering, or IPO, Nasdaq.com reported on a Dow Jones story. In November, the lingerie, sportswear and swimwear company said it aimed to list in the prime standard segment of the German stock exchange, naming equinet Bank AG and private bank BHF-Bank as joint lead managers and joint bookrunners of the IPO.

Property developer John Fleming has filed for bankruptcy to a British court, which will allow him to emerge from the process after a year, compared with up to 12 years under the Irish system, the Irish Times reported. The Cork developer, whose construction and investment firms owe €1 billion to their banks, is the first of Ireland’s major developers to make such a move. A receiver is now in control of Mr Fleming’s finances, following a declaration of bankruptcy in an Essex court. The petition gives the address of Mr Fleming and his wife as Billericay in Essex, England.

Still struggling to calm financial markets, European governments are debating whether to increase the lending power of a backstop fund intended to rescue countries threatened by the debt crisis, the International Herald Tribune reported. As European Union leaders prepared for a meeting Thursday and Friday, intensive discussions were under way on whether the fund’s full headline figure of 440 billion euros ($589 billion) could be made available for loans.

New rules regarding the subordinated debt of Irish banks, including Bank of Ireland and AIB, and a proposal to transfer the deposits of Irish Nationwide Building Society to Anglo Irish Bank, are expected to be introduced tomorrow as part of the Credit Institutions (Stabilisation) Bill 2010, the Irish Times reported.

Irish lawmakers are expected to pass a parliamentary vote on accepting a €67.5 billion ($89.2 billion) aid package from the European Union and International Monetary Fund Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The ruling coalition, led by Prime Minister Brian Cowen's Fianna Fail party, is expected to win the vote with the support of lawmakers unaffiliated to any political party. The government has already passed parts of its 2011 budget with the help of independent lawmakers' support.

International accountancy group PwC is alleged to have missed numerous warning signs about the state of Iceland’s banks long before they collapsed in 2008, according to a leaked investigation that exposes widespread irregularities among the doomed lenders, the Irish Times reported. The findings were made by a team of international investigators in reports commissioned by the Icelandic special prosecutor, who is investigating possible criminal wrongdoing before the bank crash.