Stricken British subprime lender Cattles is trying to cement a so far elusive debt deal with its creditors in the next week to avoid administration, sources close to the matter said on Friday, Reuters reported. Cattles will need support from enough bondholders -- who will recover only a small portion of their investment -- to keep afloat, as months of restructuring talks come to a head. Should that fail, the Hull-based firm will likely call in administrators, three sources said, putting about 3,000 jobs at risk.

Fighting to prevent an accelerating debt crisis from engulfing Portugal and Spain, Europe’s finance ministers approved an 85 billion euro bailout package for Ireland, while also agreeing for the first time to hold private investors accountable for losses in future crises, beginning in 2013, the International Herald Tribune reported.

The European emergency fund, promoted as having the financial firepower to douse a financial crisis in the euro zone, may not even have enough money to cover a bailout of Spain, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. "[The fund] will be very close to the line, it will be precarious and it won't leave anything for anybody else," said Whitney Debevoise, a sovereign-debt lawyer with Arnold Porter and former World Bank executive director.

Germany's upper house of parliament Friday approved the country's bank restructuring law, which includes a bank levy to generate funds for troubled banks, Dow Jones reported. The upper house voted against the recommendations of its finance and economic committees, which were in favor of having the conciliation committee of both houses of parliament deal with the law, as the proposed levy would also affect savings and cooperative banks. The legislation sets up a restructuring procedure for banks, allowing for early intervention to tackle problems before insolvency.

European leaders sparred over whether to commit more funds to rescue struggling euro-zone countries, as financial-market pressure on the region's weakest economies intensified, The Wall Street Journal reported. The European Union's executive arm, the Brussels-based EU Commission, floated a proposal on Wednesday to double the size of Europe's €440 billion ($588 billion) bailout fund for euro-zone governments, but the idea was dismissed by Germany, according to people familiar with the situation.

Irish Nationwide has succeeded in its legal bid to dismiss a lawsuit by two subordinated bondholders in the High Court in London as a judge said he could not stop the Government’s plan to share the €5.4 billion cost of the building society, The Irish Times reported. The bondholders, Satinland Finance and Trimast Holding, had sought to force a unit of French bank BNP Paribas, the trustee of the bonds, to file a winding up petition against Irish Nationwide to force their repayment in full. The investment funds did not have a valid legal claim, Judge George Mann said in his ruling.

As fears about Ireland’s political stability rattled Europe on Tuesday, the party of Prime Minister Brian Cowen brushed aside calls for his immediate ouster on Tuesday and urged the government to approve wrenching budget- and deficit-reduction plans in order to secure a $100 billion bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, the International Herald Tribune reported.

Spanish officials are mounting an aggressive campaign to dismiss fears that Europe's fiscal woes—which have already leapt from Greece to Ireland and may soon spread to Portugal—will reach their shores, The Wall Street Journal reported. This week, Spanish officials hastened to throw up a firewall around their country with a volley of positive comments about the progress of Spain's fiscal reforms and the soundness of its banking sector. The message they are emphasizing: Spain is not Ireland, which is on track for an estimated €80 billion ($109 billion) international bailout.

A UK court case involving Lehman Brothers and Canadian telecoms firm Nortel could have dramatic consequences for the ranking of creditors in a corporate bankruptcy, Reuters reported. The case, which starts on Wednesday, will look at whether pension funds should rank above other creditors, including the fees paid to the administrators of failed companies. The outcome will be key for the way insolvent companies tackle pension deficits. Lehman's deficit stood at 148 million pounds ($234.9 million) when it filed for bankruptcy, and Nortel's at 2.1 billion pounds.

The Securities and Exchange Commission says the transfer of $1.28 billion in disputed cash and securities from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. to Barclays PLC as part of the controversial sale of Lehman's brokerage business could violate U.S. securities law, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The SEC said the transfer of assets held in two reserve accounts would violate a consumer-protection rule because it would leave the failed investment bank with insufficient funds to satisfy the claims of customers whose accounts were not transferred to Barclays.