The new gas deal with Russia offering Ukraine a 30% discount on the price of Russian natural gas supplies will help Naftogaz to avoid bankruptcy, the Ukrainian national energy company said in a statement on Thursday, RIA Novosti reported. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych agreed during their meeting on Wednesday in Kharkov in east Ukraine that Russia would grant Ukraine a 30% discount on the gas price of $330 per 1,000 cu m over the next ten years.

UBS and Credit Suisse should change their structure to allow their break-up in the case of an insolvency to limit the risks for the Swiss economy, a government commission said on Thursday, Reuters reported. In an interim report on the too-big-to-fail issue, the commission urged lawmakers to enable regulators to force the banks if necessary to adopt a structure that allowed to keep key businesses going in case of an insolvency.

The banking sector strongly criticised International Monetary Fund proposals to impose new taxes on the industry, claiming yesterday that they would hit profits hard, would not reduce the risk of future failures and were at odds with other plans to clean up the industry, the Financial Times reported. The IMF suggested a three-pronged assault on banks and other financial groups that would include a flat tax on the liabilities on their balance sheets and levies on profits and pay.

Swedish network equipment vendor L.M. Ericsson Telephone Co. has purchased Nortel Networks Corp.'s controlling stake in a South Korean joint venture for $242 million in cash, a move that should help boost its footprint in the Asian country, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Ericsson said Wednesday that it has bought Nortel's 50% plus one share stake in its joint venture with LG Electronics Inc., LG-Nortel. LG-Nortel will be renamed LG-Ericsson and will continue to have its headquarters in Seoul.

Hector Sants, the chief of Britain’s financial regulator, pledged last year to reverse his agency’s reputation as a toothless tiger. He wanted to spread fear across the financial services industry by stepping up the aggressiveness of its inquiries and by pursuing more prominent fraud cases. His opportunity has arrived, and its name is Goldman Sachs, The New York Times reported. The Goldman investigation comes at a pivotal time for the British regulator. The F.S.A.’s reputation, like its American counterpart’s, was damaged badly by the financial crisis.

Real estate company Hansteen Holdings has agreed to buy 61 properties from a trio of distressed investors for around 80 million pounds ($124 million) as the frequency of firesales in Britain's indebted property market picks up, Reuters reported. The multi-sector portfolio was bought from receivers acting for various subsidiaries of collapsed property firms Kilmartin Holdings Limited and Kilmartin Group Limited and administrators of Annfield Assets Limited. Some 42 of the 61 properties are in Scotland, 18 in England and one property is in Northern Ireland.

The cost of insuring Greek sovereign debt against default surged to the highest-ever based on closing prices after the travel disruption caused by Iceland’s volcano delayed talks to help resolve the country’s debt crisis, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. European Union and International Monetary Fund officials are scheduled to travel to Athens on April 21 to start negotiating conditions for a €45 billion ($61 billion) bailout package for the country.

As the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund prepare a lending package to rescue Greece from financial crisis, recent history provides both an inspirational story and a cautionary tale, the Financial Times reported. The inspirational story is Brazil, where a $30 billion IMF package in 2002 allied to a plan for fiscal stringency helped restore confidence in the government's debt.

Leighton Holdings Ltd. said Monday it and Deutsche Bank were no longer in the bidding for Sydney's troubled Lane Cove Tunnel, Dow Jones reported. "I can confirm we have withdrawn from Lane Cove," a Leighton spokesman said, declining to give reasons for the decision. Leighton Contractors and Deutsche Bank were among the bidders for the 3.6-kilometer, twin-tunnel highway in Sydney's northern suburbs, which was put up for sale earlier this year after the company that owned it was pushed into receivership due to heavy debts and its unpopularity with motorists.

Greece capitulated to market pressure on Thursday and took an important step towards a bail-out from its eurozone partners and the International Monetary Fund as it formally sought “consultations” over a €30 billion-plus ($40 billion, £26 billion) loan package to stave off default, the Financial Times reported. In a letter to the European Commission, Greece’s finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, said Athens wanted to discuss “a multi-year economic policy programme with the Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund”.