Wind Hellas's creditors have wrested control of the Greek telecommunications company from Egyptian entrepreneur Naguib Sawiris after agreeing to a EUR420 million cash injection, the company said in a statement Monday, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The announcement ends negotiations between creditor groups that dragged beyond last Thursday's deadline after bidders revised their offers.

Policy makers at the European Central Bank face the same high unemployment and slow growth that dogs their friends across the Atlantic at the Federal Reserve. But don't expect the ECB to follow the Fed in taking extraordinary measures to try to get things moving again, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Fed thinks it can and should use the tools at its disposal, in this case buying U.S. Treasury bonds to bring down long-term interest rates and goose growth, because doing so will bring down the jobless rate. The Europeans won't have any of it.

High school students clashed with police and protesters blocked two main highways in France on Monday as confrontation stiffened between an array of strikers and the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy over plans to raise the minimum age for retirement, The New York Times reported. The protests, as labor unions called for national stoppages on Tuesday, came as the Senate prepared to vote on Wednesday on a package of reforms to the retirement system proposed by Mr. Sarkozy to wrest France from the economic doldrums gripping many parts of Europe.

Financial regulator Matthew Elderfield called for an urgent review of Ireland’s bankruptcy laws as international ratings agency Moody’s reported a growing number of Irish mortgage holders are in arrears, The Irish Times reported. Reform of the bankruptcy regime could allow borrowers to earn a fresh start by discharging their debt over a reasonable period of time, Mr Elderfield said. However, he cautioned against debt forgiveness for the thousands of mortgage holders currently behind with payments on their loans.

Nortel Networks Corp. Thursday postponed a hearing on the appointment of a mediator to help broker an end to disputes over the cash raised in the liquidation of its global telecommunications equipment business, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Lawyers for U.K. retirees whose pensions are in jeopardy due to Nortel's bankruptcy have petitioned to be part of the mediation, and the company is in talks with them, said James Bromley, attorney for Nortel. The Toronto company and its creditors want to summon Layn R.

This northeast England town has long boasted it has the largest office complex in Europe. But the 8,000 employees who fill two gray buildings here known informally as "the Ministry" all work for the government. And their boss, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, is about to send many of them home for good. Most work for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, the tax agency. Their jobs are the legacy of decades of spending—especially by the prior Labour Party government—that pumped public money into Longbenton and similar places as factories closed.

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm has filed for bankruptcy in the United States after the State-owned bank rejected his proposal to settle its legal action in the High Court in Dublin over loans of €8.5 million, The Irish Times reported. Mr Drumm applied for bankruptcy in a Boston court in Massachusetts near his US home at 3pm Irish time yesterday in advance of the bank’s case starting on October 26th.

A U.K. High Court Judge granted an injunction against Liverpool owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr. that would quash a U.S.-based legal effort by the owners to stop the sale of Liverpool to New England Sports Ventures, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The injunction was sought by Liverpool's chief creditor, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, and the team's board of directors, which has approved a sale of the team to NESV despite the objections of Hicks and Gillett.

The European Union on Wednesday fired the first shot in a process that could lead to tighter supervision of auditing firms, saying that the dominance of four big companies poses "systemic risks" to the financial system, the Associated Press reported. Announcing a consultation on the role of the industry, EU markets commissioner Michel Barnier questioned whether firms that both examine a company's financial statements and provide consultancy work for the same company can truly be independent.

The High Court has appointed an interim examiner to Pierse Contracting and Pierse Building Services, two companies in the Pierse Group, one of Ireland’s biggest construction firms, InsolvencyJournal.ie reported. Mr Justice Brian McGovern appointed John McStay of McStay Luby as interim examiner to the businesses after hearing that an independent accountant believes that they have a reasonable chance of survival. In a statement the companies’ directors said that they supported the appointment of Mr McStay.