A steep rise this year in the number of businesses at risk of going bust has fuelled fears that Britain faces a tougher year than expected with more insolvencies and higher unemployment than predicted by the government, The Guardian reported. The number of companies experiencing significant or critical financial distress rose by 14% in the first three months of the year to top 160,000, according to insolvency experts Begbies Traynor.

The Greek debt crisis is approaching a moment of truth. With short-term Portuguese, Spanish and Irish bonds falling sharply Monday, euro-zone policy makers are running out of time to stop the crisis engulfing other member states and threatening the euro area as a whole. To avoid contagion, three things must happen, The Wall Street Journal Heard on the Street blog reported: The Greek problem must be sealed off; countries need to flawlessly fulfill their deficit-reduction promises; and global growth needs to be buoyant. That's a tall order.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. continued its court battle Monday to claw back billions of dollars in assets from Barclays Plc, as two witnesses testified that the British bank wasn't supposed to see an immediate gain when it bought Lehman's core U.S. operation in 2008, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. A member of Lehman's board of directors and its former president testified that the deal hammered out following Lehman's historic bankruptcy filing called for Barclays to acquire a pool of assets and an equivalent amount of liabilities when it bought Lehman's broker-dealer unit.

A bankruptcy court judge on Friday approved Lyondell Chemical Co's plan to exit bankruptcy, signaling the near-end of a 15-month process during which the chemical maker fended off a takeover and settled hundreds of environmental claims and a creditor lawsuit, Reuters reported. Judge Robert Gerber gave his assent to a plan in which Apollo Management, Ares Management and Access Industries will provide financing. Lyondell filed for bankruptcy in January of 2009 under the weight of about $24 billion in debt.

European buyout firm Triton offered to acquire insolvent German department store chain Karstadt in its entirety, submitting the one and only bid to the court-appointed administrator by the Friday deadline, Reuters reported. Triton said it presented a strategic concept to continue operating the chain as a going concern, but warned it would need Karstadt's lessors and its staff to make more sacrifices before the acquisition plans could proceed.

Sinking under the weight of its own debt and shunned by international investors, Greece on Friday asked fellow euro-zone members and the International Monetary Fund to bail it out, a humbling step that reshapes the rules of the currency union and, for Greece, augurs years of economic pain, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Ireland’s Revenue Commissioners wrote off almost €222 million in business taxes last year, mostly because companies became insolvent or ceased trading, The Irish Times reported. Issuing the authority's annual report today, chairman Josephine Feehily said Revenue had identified problems linked to a further €195 million in business tax and has entered into special instalment arrangements for repayment in 14,100 cases. She warned however that Revenue's focus remains on "timely compliance and payment of tax".

Ireland had the biggest fiscal deficit in the European Union last year – larger than both Greece and the UK - according to revised figures published on Thursday by Eurostat, the European Commission’s official statistics office, the Financial Times reported. The deficit was revised up from 11.8 per cent to 14.3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product after Eurostat ruled that the Irish government’s €4bn of aid to Anglo Irish Bank must be treated as part of current spending.

New figures revealed that Greece's debt crisis is even worse than investors believed, delivering a fresh shock to European markets and all but ensuring that the International Monetary Fund and euro-zone countries will have to step in within weeks to bail out the country, The Wall Street Journal reported. The European Union's statistical authority said Thursday that Greece's 2009 budget deficit—already yawning—was wider than Athens had estimated. Also Thursday, Moody's Investors Service downgraded Greece's debt rating.

Goldman Sachs is considering a takeover of the remains of insolvent German department store chain Karstadt if no other investor emerges, two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters. Goldman Sachs as well as Deutsche Bank are part of the Highstreet consortium, which owns about two-thirds of Karstadt's store space. "Is increasingly looking like Highstreet is keeping this option open as a last resort," one of the sources said on Wednesday. Goldman would look for a co-investor if it decided to bid for Karstadt, another source said.