Saab Automobile, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month, will cut 750 jobs at its main factory in southern Sweden in response to falling demand, Bloomberg reported. About 650 of the affected workers are tied to production, while the remaining 100 jobs are administrative positions, Saab spokeswoman Gunilla Gustavs said by telephone from Gothenburg today. Saab has about 4,100 workers, most of them in Trollhaettan, where Saab makes the 9-3 and 9-5 models.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday said Ukraine was on the verge of bankruptcy but promised Moscow would not push its ex-Soviet neighbour over the edge with high gas bills, local news agencies reported. The global crisis has battered Ukraine's economy, with industrial output down more than 30 percent year-on-year, GDP seen shrinking six percent in 2009 and its currency losing 50 percent of its value against the dollar at one point last year.

Britain's Financial Services Authority warned bankers should be "very frightened" of the watchdog, promising intrusive oversight, but warned against forming a monolithic EU supervisory body. The FSA would judge firms on the outcomes of their actions not on simple box-ticking, its Chief Executive Hector Sants said in a speech to members of Britain's financial community at Thomson Reuters offices in Canary Wharf, London. "There is a view that people are not frightened of the FSA. I can assure you that this is a view I am determined to correct.

Responding to the report that DLA Piper's United Kingdom offices have recently shed 7 to 8 percent of their partnership, a prominent New York legal consultant said that cutting deadweight at the highest levels could help firms stay afloat amid the recession, Bankruptcy Law360 reported. On Wednesday, a leaked memo revealed that up to 8 percent of DLA Piper's partners have recently left its U.K. office, Legal Week reported. The memo said that since June the London office has hired only 37 employees but lost 145, according to the report.

The president of Poland challenged the view that Eastern Europe as a whole is heading into a deep recession that is dragging down Western Europe and posing grave risks to the global economy, warning in an interview against lumping all countries in the region "into one basket," the International Herald Tribune reported. "We were hit as everyone else by the crisis, though we have not suffered to the degree that some other countries have," President Lech Kaczynski said Tuesday.

Liechtenstein's largest bank said it is abandoning its tradition-rich trust business, seeking to distance itself from accusations from officials in Germany and the U.S. that it helped rich foreigners evade taxes, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move by LGT Group, which is owned by the tiny Alpine principality's royal family, marks a move away from a mainstay of Liechtenstein banking: the formation of secretive foundations as tax shelters.

Europe's three biggest economies showed signs of steepening economic declines in data released Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. Industrial production in France and the U.K. crumbled during January. At the same time German exports, driver of the region's biggest economy, dropped sharply. The difficulties at big manufacturers and exporters have dashed hopes that Europe's economies hit bottom in the fourth quarter. The services sector is faring no better.

Russia is “not yet on the brink” of a credit-rating downgrade by Moody’s Investors Service as the ruble and foreign reserves stabilize and the government resists taking corporate debt obligations, Bloomberg reported. The ratings firm has no current plans to follow Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings, which both cut their debt ratings for Russia since December, according to Jonathan Schiffer, Moody’s lead analyst on Russian sovereign debt. Moody’s rates Russia at Baa1, three levels above non-investment grade and a step higher than equivalent ratings from S&P and Fitch.

The Karmsund shipyard in western Norway has filed for bankruptcy, its owner Karmsund Maritime AS said on Tuesday. The unlisted group said its Karmsund Maritime Services AS (KMS) unit, which ran the yard and had 2007 turnover of 800 million Norwegian crowns ($113.6 million) and 130 employees, had been unable to secure financing. "The firm has experienced cost overruns and as a consequence of the financial crisis has been unable to get financing for further operations," Karmsund Maritime said in a statement. The parent company also owns 14 other companies, which it said continued to operate.

Banco Popolare became the first Italian bank to take up the government's offer of support for its lenders on Tuesday, with newspapers saying it could use the funds to help delist its Italease unit, Reuters reported. Italy's sixth-biggest bank said it had asked the Economy Ministry and the Bank of Italy for permission to issue €1.45 billion ($1.83 billion) of securities under a government-sponsored bond-purchasing scheme. Other leading lenders, including the country's two biggest banks--UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo--have said they would evaluate the programme.