Developer Orco Property Group said on Wednesday a Paris court approved a plan exiting the group from its more than year-long creditor protection period, Reuters reported. Orco said the plan's implementation and debt rescheduling will allow it to re-invest in real estate projects. It added the plan includes the repayment of 100 percent of the company's admitted claims over 10 years. Read more.

Real Mallorca have applied to the courts to go into voluntary administration in the next few days in a bid to sort out their finances, the Spanish club have said, Reuters India reported. Mallorca have been struggling with a debt of around €85 million ($103.4 million) and attempts to find a buyer to invest money into the club have so far been unsuccessful.

The French government on Wednesday led European reaction against the German government’s move to ban the naked short selling of eurozone sovereign debt instruments, the Financial Times reported. Christine Lagarde, French finance minister, ruled out a similar move by France and called for an urgent meeting of European securities regulators to discuss the implications of Germany’s unilateral ban. Sweden and The Netherlands also dismissed the German move, as European equity markets tumbled and the euro hit a fresh four-year low against the dollar.

EU finance ministers backed new rules for hedge funds and private equity groups on Tuesday, spelling defeat for Britain's new coalition government at its first European Union meeting, Reuters reported. "We can basically say that we have the agreement we need to take a general approach (to tighter restrictions),” Spain's finance minister Elena Salgado told reporters as EU colleagues discussed the issue in Brussels.

Euro-zone politicians and central bankers repeatedly have said that a restructuring of Greece's debt isn't an option. One possible reason: Achieving a restructuring of the debts of an industrialized country won't be simple, The Wall Street Journal reported. Emerging-market episodes offer some clues as to the mechanics, but it is far from clear that a restructuring could achieve sufficient debt relief for a borrower without wreaking havoc elsewhere. First, there is a question of size. Greece has some €300 billion ($371 billion) of government debt.

Greece received the first installment of a three-year emergency-loan package from euro-region allies, allowing the country to repay €8.5 billion ($10.6 billion) of bonds due tomorrow and avoid default, Bloomberg reported. The EU completed the transfer of €14.5 billion, with 10 euro-region countries, including Germany, contributing to the first payment, the Athens-based Finance Ministry said today in an e-mailed statement. The International Monetary Fund, which is participating in the bailout, made its initial contribution of €5.5 billion last week.

European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet “gulped a bit” when he was told by the former chief executive of the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), Dr Michael Somers, that the State might need up to €60 billion to buy toxic loans from the Irish banks, The Irish Times reported. Speaking on RTÉ’s Marian Finucane Show yesterday, Dr Somers said he travelled to meet Mr Trichet because there was nowhere “except the ECB” that funding for the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) could come from. Dr Somers said he did “a lot of hard swallowing” about Nama.

Sea Launch's plans to emerge from bankruptcy under majority Russian ownership are still subject to court and regulatory approval, but company leaders say they expect to resume commercial missions early next year, Spaceflight Now reported. The besieged launch firm filed a plan of reorganization in a Delaware bankruptcy court this week, kicking off several months of behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Sea Launch's new owners and unsecured creditors.

Political leaders and central bankers on both sides of the Atlantic struggled over the weekend to persuade jittery investors that Europe would pull through its sovereign debt crisis, saying that it would be helped by a stronger-than-expected economic recovery in the United States, The New York Times reported.

Europeans and Americans see a plausible chance of their governments defaulting in the next decade, with the French emerging from among the largest nations as most nervous about their country’s public finances, the Financial Times reported. Some 53 per cent of those polled in France thought it was likely that their government would be unable to meet its financial commitments within 10 years, according to a Financial Times/Harris opinion poll published on Monday. Just 27 per cent said it was unlikely.