Greece's debt-ridden economy has received unexpected endorsement from China as the two countries announced multibillion euro accords to boost cooperation in fields as diverse as shipping, tourism and telecommunications, The Guardian reported. The deals, which will see Greek olive oil being exported to China, were a welcome relief for a government smarting over Moody's move hours earlier to downgrade the nation's credit rating to junk. As investors moved in the other direction, the world's pre-eminent emerging economy embraced Greece.

Newly elected and facing a huge budget deficit, Prime Minister George Papandreou arrived in Brussels for his first meeting with European leaders last December with few cards to play, The New York Times reported. Improbably, perhaps, his strategy of total transparency worked. Within months, he had managed to secure the bailout he needed while still maintaining good relations with his fellow European leaders — quite a feat, many observers say. At the height of the crisis in the spring, Mr. Papandreou brought the International Monetary Fund into negotiations.

Greek telecommunications company Wind Hellas said it has begun discussions with its owner, Weather Investments, and its creditors after the Greek government's austerity measures placed "significant extra pressure" on the company's capital structure, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Wind Hellas, which has debt of about €1.7 billion, said it has hired investment bank Morgan Stanley and law firms White & Case and Karatzas & Partners, to advise it on alternative capital structures.

France said it would cut public spending by €45 billion ($54.48 billion) over the next three years and raise its retirement age, following other European nations that have announced austerity measures, The Wall Street Journal reported. The announcement came ahead of a week in which President Nicolas Sarkozy is scheduled to have talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, and the French government is expected to announce details of a rise in France's current standard retirement age.

Spanish officials acknowledged that the country's banks and companies are having difficulty finding credit, underscoring the pressure Madrid faces to pursue deep structural changes to win back investor confidence, The Wall Street Journal reported. Investors are particularly concerned that Spain would be unable to supply its banks with more capital, if needed, without emergency aid from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Spain has been scrambling in recent weeks to convince markets that it can repair both its ballooning deficit and its troubled banking sector.

BP has tapped financial advisers at Goldman Sachs, Blackstone Group and Credit Suisse as pressure mounts on the British energy giant over the devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill, US media reported Monday. A BP spokesman denied the reports, saying the group did not want to reveal "who are our advisors and on what they are advising us," Agence France-Presse reported.

Spain has refuted claims that it is to seek aid from the European Union, The Irish Times reported. Spain's economy ministry said Friday that it has not made a request for economic aid from the European Union, after a report in the FT Deutschland that the EU was preparing an aid package in case Madrid asked for it. The newspaper said that the EU was preparing for an aid application in the months ahead for access to the fund set up to lend to euro zone countries that run into Greek-style payments problems.

Deutsche Bank is deeply involved in the American real estate crisis. After initially profiting from subprime mortgages, it is now arranging to have many of these homes sold at foreclosure auctions. The damage to the bank's image in the United States is growing, Spiegel Online reported in an analysis. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Deutsche Bank now holds loans for American single-family and multi-family houses worth about $3.7 billion (€3.1 billion). The bank, however, claims that much of this debt consists of loans to wealthy private customers.

If emerging markets could teach a lesson to cash-strapped euro-zone nations, it would be that a debt default isn't always the end of the world, Reuters UK reported. At least for Greece, burdened by about 300 billion euros (249.6 billion pounds) in debt it can hardly service, a restructuring could be a less painful alternative, as well as an inevitable political choice as stern austerity measures face growing popular opposition.

French and German banks have lent nearly $1 trillion to the most troubled European countries and are more exposed to the debt crisis than the banks of any other countries, according to a new report that is likely to add pressure on institutions to detail their holdings, The New York Times reported.