Dutch startup Sellaband, which enabled music fans to invest in their favorite bands, last week on Friday requested provisional suspension of payments in their home country. It was promptly granted by an Amsterdam Court, and was this morning changed into full bankruptcy. The news of the bankruptcy led to a flurry of reports about Sellaband calling it quits for good – or as we like to say, hitting the deadpool, TechCrunch reported. Now it appears that there’s a chance the startup may live to fight another fight after all.

A standoff between Greece and its euro-zone partners over the timing and terms of a potential rescue is nearing a crucial juncture as the cash-strapped country faces a key test of investor willingness to keep funding its ballooning deficit, The Wall Street Journal reported. The haggling over possible European aid for Greece has become a game of chicken between Athens and the core economies of the euro zone, led by Germany and France.

As speculators attack the euro, Europe is facing a growing threat of national bankruptcies, Spiegel Online reported. The consequences would be dramatic for the whole of the continent, especially German banks, which are highly exposed to risky debt. EU politicians are willing to pay almost any price to help the beleaguered countries. There has never been this much uncertainty.

Concerns that Greece and other struggling European nations may not be able to repay their debts are focusing investor attention on another big worry: Economies across the Continent have used complex financial transactions—sometimes in secret—to hide the true size of their debts and deficits, The Wall Street Journal reported. Investors long turned a blind eye to European governments' aggressive bookkeeping, aimed at meeting the euro zone's fiscal ceilings.

Greece, which joined the euro two years after its inception, has concealed the dodgy state of its finances. Now it is under attack from speculators. A default could spread panic to other deficit-plagued economies, including those of Spain and Portugal, with scary consequences for Europe’s already shaky banking system. But if Greece’s partners bail it out, defying the euro’s founding treaty, the currency will suffer. Either way, the euro is in trouble, The Economist reported. This dilemma is felt especially keenly in Germany.

Greece replaced its debt management chief as declines in the country’s bonds roil European markets, Bloomberg reported. Petros Christodoulou, general manager of treasury and global markets at National Bank of Greece SA, the country’s biggest lender, will take over from Spyros Papanicolaou as head of the Athens-based Public Debt Management Agency, the country’s Finance Ministry said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan has made the case to the EU’s new economics commissioner, Olli Rehn, that Ireland is now at a “different stage” to Greece and other weak euro-zone members thanks to stringent austerity measures he has taken, The Irish Times reported. Before euro group finance ministers discussed moves to bail out Greece last night, Mr Lenihan said at a meeting with Mr Rehn that he was cautiously optimistic that Ireland was turning the corner with an expansion of the economy in prospect later this year.

The Spanish government got a much-needed boost Wednesday when the nation's new €5 billion ($6.9 billion) bond issue was well received by investors, in spite of recent jitters over some euro-zone countries' public finances, The Wall Street Journal reported. The offering drew about €14 billion of interest from investors, a sign that—despite some recent doubts—Spain still has the confidence of bond markets. The deal followed bond sales by Portugal and Ireland, other nations that have been the source of some investor concern in the wake of Greece's woes.

Greece denied using complex currency transactions to mask its budget deficit in a 2008 meeting with European Union officials, according to the European Commission, The Wall Street Journal reported. According a report in German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, Goldman Sachs helped Greece raise about $1 billion through 2002 currency swaps that weren't recorded in the country's budget data. The report alleged that the deal, which was linked to dollar- and yen-denominated Greek debt, used a "fictional" exchange rate to boost the country's income.

Derivative contracts taken out by Italian municipalities could jeopardize local public finances for decades, even though the global financial crisis has softened the blow in the short term, Italy's Audit Court said Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. "Certain debt and imbalances are magnified over time, and may wring sacrifices from future generations for 20 or even 30 years," Mario Ristuccia, the chief prosecutor of the administrative court, said in a speech delivered here.