Irish police and fraud investigators raided the central Dublin offices of Anglo Irish Bank Corp. Tuesday, signaling an intensifying inquiry into the now-nationalized bank and more woes for Ireland's financial sector, The Wall Street Journal reported. Shares in Irish banks fell sharply Tuesday after about two dozen officials, including officers from the Irish police force's fraud bureau, entered the bank's offices at about 10 a.m. local time to search for computers and documents.

Japan's exports nearly halved in January from a year earlier, with record slides in shipments to the United States, Europe and the rest of Asia pointing to a deepening recession across much of the world, Reuters reported. Japanese car exports fell by two-thirds from a year earlier, accelerating from a 45 percent annual decline seen in December, as the value of overall exports hit a 10-year low. "We don't see any signs of a pick-up in the Japanese economy in the near term. The economy will gradually worsen further," said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.

Opel, the German subsidiary of US car maker General Motors, will require European state aid to survive, the head of its works council said Monday amid reports the firm could go under with the loss of 25,000 jobs, Agence France-Presse reported. There will not be a "isolated German solution for Opel," Klaus Franz told Deutschlandfunk radio. "If we find a solution, it will only be a European solution," he added. Opel needs more than €3.3 billion ($4.2 billion) to stay afloat, according to media reports, as auto sales have slumped around the world, especially in Europe.

As two French banks struggle to weather the financial turbulence, Paris has decided to accelerate their merger, take a controlling stake in the combined company and install a management team of its own, the International Herald Tribune reported. Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said Monday that the French government would inject up to €5 billion, or $6.4 billion, into the bank that will be formed from the merger of Caisse d'Épargne and Banque Populaire, through the purchase of bonds that could be converted into shares.

The number of insolvencies in Romania is likely to exceed 20,000 in 2009 from 14,500 a year earlier as a repercussion of the global financial crisis, the National Union of Insolvency Practitioners (ANPIR) forecast. Around 1,600 cases of insolvency were recorded in January from 1,000 in the same month of the previous year, ANPIR president Arin Octav Stanescu reported. Debt recovery fell to 2.0 million euros in January from a monthly average of 35-40 million euros in 2007 and 2008.

The German government distanced itself on Monday from any commitment to Opel's future, saying it would wait for the ailing automaker to present a business plan before considering state guarantees. Opel, the German unit of General Motors, needs some €3.3 billion ($4.15 billion) to keep afloat through to the end of 2011, a source at the carmaker told Reuters on Friday.

World stock markets fell sharply Friday as the selling pressure on Wall Street was expected to continue at the open later amid pessimism about the ability of governments to prevent the deepest global economic downturn in generations, the Associated Press reported. Investors in Asia and Europe found few reasons to wade into the market after the Dow Jones industrial average breached the levels it touched in November, when global equities went into a tailspin as the financial crisis gathered steam.

General Motors's European brands are near collapse, with Germany's Opel in need of substantially more funding and Saab reported to be asking for $590 million from the Swedish government to help it restructure, Reuters reported. Filing for protection from creditors on Friday, Saab said it would present a reorganisation proposal within three weeks while court filings revealed that it estimated its losses in 2008 and 2009 at around 3 billion Swedish crowns ($340.1 million).

The combination of government bailouts and falling tax revenue combined Thursday to show the perilous state of the U.K.'s balance sheet, The Wall Street Journal reported. The country's Office of National Statistics said two bailed-out banks--Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and Lloyds Banking Group PLC--have been classified as public-sector entities, moving as much as £1.5 trillion ($2.136 trillion) of liabilities to the country's balance sheet. Meanwhile, the U.K. Treasury reported that tax receipts for January, usually a bumper month, dropped 10% from a year ago to £53.8 billion.

General Motors Europe said on Wednesday it was prepared to discuss partnerships or outside investment for its Opel unit as pressure mounted on the government in Berlin to help rescue the German brand, Spiegel Online reported. But Chancellor Angela Merkel said Opel must first present a clear restructuring plan before her government can consider giving assistance. GM Europe's United States parent company on Tuesday night announced plans to reduce its global workforce by 47,000 jobs this year and to cut five additional American plants by 2012.