French government officials and bankers gathered in Paris Wednesday to promote the city as a financial capital of Europe that could take over from London after the U.K. vote to leave the European Union, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a rare moment of unity across the political and corporate divide in France, Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls addressed hundreds of bankers alongside Valérie Pécresse, the center-right head of the Paris region who has led the charge to lure financial services to the French capital in the wake of the U.K. referendum.

Solocal Group began a court-backed process to restructure 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) of debt, its second reorganization in about two years, Bloomberg News reported. The French directories publisher asked the Commercial Court of Nanterre to appoint a restructuring adviser, triggering a default event on 350 million euros of June 2018 bonds, according to a statement Thursday. The Paris-based company’s shares and bonds tumbled. Solocal, previously called PagesJaunes, has warned it won’t be able to repay debt due in 2018 as online services lure users from traditional print directories.

French President François Hollande’s government said Wednesday it will ramp up austerity measures in the next two years to stay on track with budget targets, despite a looming presidential election, The Wall Street Journal reported. The French finance ministry said it would find an additional €3.8 billion ($4.31 billion) of savings this year and another €5 billion in 2017 to ensure France meets its pledge of getting the budget deficit under the European limit of 3% of economic output. The belt-tightening indicates Mr.

Two of Europe's most powerful central bankers have called on the eurozone to form its own treasury and push forward with a quantum leap in integration to secure the single currency's future, The Telegraph reported. Germany's Jens Weidmann and France's newly appointed François Villeroy de Galhau urged member states to move towards a "comprehensive sharing of sovereignty" which would include a common 19-member treasury and an "independent fiscal council" with a eurozone parliament.

French President François Hollande said Monday he will pour more than €2 billion ($2.2 billion) in public money into apprenticeships and training schemes as part of an emergency plan to combat the unrelenting rise in unemployment, The Wall Street Journal reported. The French leader said economic growth remains too weak to have a sustainable impact on unemployment, which has crept upwards throughout his presidency to reach 10.6% last year, an 18-year high.

The number of jobless in France rose to a new record in October even as the wider measure of people looking for work showed tentative signs of stabilising, the Financial Times reported. Figures from the labour ministry showed 42,000 additional people were out of work last month, bringing the total number of jobless to 3.59m. The increase was the biggest monthly jump in at least two years and will doubtless deal a blow to President Francois Hollande’s pledge to set the economy back on track and create more jobs.

The Marseille commercial court on Friday selected Corsican transport entrepreneur Patrick Rocca as preferred bidder for France-Corsica ferry operator SNCM, Reuters reported. The ruling clears the way for SNCM majority shareholder Transdev, jointly owned by water and waste group Veolia and French state bank CDC, to sell SNCM. The company has been under court protection since late 2014, when it failed to repay a loan to Transdev, which owns 66 percent of SNCM. An SNCM sale would allow Veolia and CDC to unwind their Transdev 50-50 joint venture.

Nearly 150 leading economists today rebuked President François Hollande’s plan to appoint a former executive of France’s largest lender to head the country’s central bank by calling on legislators to block the appointment over concerns about conflicts of interest, the New York Times reported today. Hollande said last week that François Villeroy de Galhau, formerly co-chief operating officer at BNP Paribas, would head the Banque de France, succeeding Christian Noyer, who is to step down at the end of October.

European Union efforts to build a financial-transactions tax among 11 nations pressed on in a bid to break a deadlock over what to tax and at what rate, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday. “Important advances were made” at a meeting among participating nations on Saturday in Luxembourg, said French Finance Minister Michel Sapin. He said that France continues to push for a wide base and a low rate for the trading levies. Sapin said that ministers agreed to tax gross trades rather than net transactions, which would include high frequency trading.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and French President Francois Hollande agreed on Thursday that a new bailout for Greece could and should be agreed soon after August 15, Reuters reported. The two men were speaking in Egypt on the sidelines of a ceremony to inaugurate the New Suez Canal, the Greek prime minister's office in Athens said. Hollande, speaking to reporters at the inauguration, said: “The objective is for the negotiations on the program … to be concluded at the end of August. We know it’s difficult but we must make sure that the conditions are met, in a good spirit.