Air France-KLM, the French-Dutch airline, said Thursday that it had written off the entire value of its 25 percent holding in its partner Alitalia, raising doubts that it will take part in a plan to inject 300 million euros into the struggling Italian flag carrier, The International New York Times reported.

The French government bowed to taxpayer anger Tuesday for the second time in three days by suspending a new levy on trucks, raising new questions about President François Hollande's strategy to fix public finances primarily through higher taxes, The Wall Street Journal reported. Following a weekend of violent clashes between police and farmers opposed to the new levy, the government said the so-called "eco-tax," which aimed to raise €1 billion ($1.37 billion) a year to finance more environmentally friendly transport, won't come into effect in January as planned.

France's Hediard chain of luxury food stores has filed for bankruptcy, a source close to the case told AFP on Monday, France 24 reported. Hediard, which has shops in 30 countries from Madagascar to Vietnam, declared itself insolvent at a commercial court in Paris, said the source. A hearing is due to take place on Thursday to determine whether an administrator should be appointed. The fine foods and confectionery stores opened in 1854 in Paris as a small shop specialising in exotic foods and soon began expanding.

Despite previous calls by France’s Socialist government to rein in financial markets, the government’s firm stand against a proposal to tax intraday trading is yet another sign of its waning political will to curb speculative trading, and force the financial sector to significantly contribute to public finances, The Wall Street Journal Money Beat blog reported.

The chief executive of Air France-KLM, the largest foreign shareholder in Alitalia, said on Wednesday that he had not ruled out the possibility of participating in a fresh bailout of the struggling Italian flagship carrier as it scrambles to produce a plan to shore up its dwindling cash reserves, the International Herald Tribune reported. But given the weak financial position of the French-Dutch group, which owns 25 percent of Alitalia, any assistance would be subject to strict conditions, he said.

In France, clear signs of recovery are confounded by other indications that the country is still struggling to get back on a sustainable growth path, the Financial Times reported. This week, as the government prepared to unveil its full 2014 budget on Wednesday, the September Markit purchasing managers’ index for manufacturing and services showed a move back into growth for the first time in 18 months. The OECD club of rich countries recently forecast that the economy as a whole would grow by 0.3 per cent this year – against its previous projection of a 0.3 per cent contraction.

Air France-KLM will strengthen its role in Italian airline Alitalia SpA, Italian transport minister Maurizio Lupi said on Monday, Reuters reported. "I expect that Air France will strongly reaffirm that Alitalia is a strategic asset for Air France, and therefore that there will be a strengthening of Air France's role," Lupi said at the margins of an industry conference in Milan.

Belgian financial group Dexia has entered into exclusive talks with New York Life Investments to sell its asset management unit, it said late on Thursday. The group, which has to sell Dexia Asset Management as part of a deal with European regulators in exchange for state aid it received in recent years, did not say how much New York Life Investments planned to offer. Dexia had initially agreed to sell the asset management arm to Hong Kong-based GCS Capital for 380 million euros ($507 million), but that deal fell through in July.

France has stepped up its assault on tax havens by blacklisting Bermuda, British Virgin Islands and Jersey, in a sudden move set to impose heavy penalties on thousands of French individuals and businesses, the Financial Times reported. The three offshore centres have been added to a list of “non-co-operative jurisdictions”, triggering withholding taxes of up to 75 per cent on payments from France.

The French government has unveiled a much-anticipated reform of its deficit-hit pension system, raising the level and duration of contributions but avoiding some of the measures demanded by the EU and others seeking a more radical overhaul, the Financial Times reported. Anxious to avoid an outbreak of social conflict that accompanied previous reform efforts, the government stuck to a promise by President François Hollande not to raise the prevailing minimum retirement age of 62, as many other European countries have done, and as Brussels recommended.