PSA Peugeot Citroen was ordered by a court to pause its restructuring plans as auto workers across France went on strike to protest industrywide job cuts amid signs the decline in European car demand is accelerating, Bloomberg reported. Workers burned tires and blocked access to some Renault SA factories and protested outside a Peugeot plant in a Paris suburb that is set to close. A court in the French capital said separately that Peugeot can’t eliminate jobs until a parts supplier that it controls tells workers how they may be affected by the automaker’s reorganization.

Video game company Atari SA said it filed for bankruptcy protection in Paris and New York on Monday after it failed to find a successor to main shareholder and sole lender BlueBay as it wrestles with tough market conditions, Reuters reported. The U.S. operations plan, in addition, to separate from their French parent to seek independent capital to grow in digital and mobile games, Atari Inc said in a statement. The U.S.

Books-to-music retailer Virgin Megastore France will formally declare itself insolvent on Wednesday, the latest casualty of an industry-wide slump in CD and DVD sales as consumers download more film and music online, Reuters reported. The filing, the first step towards a possible court-ordered company restructuring in France, coincides with the start of winter clearance sales in a morose economic climate. Shoppers are reining in spending in the euro zone's second-biggest economy where the total number of people out of work is at a 15-year high.

France’s socialist government has hinted that a replacement for its controversial 75 per cent income tax bracket, struck down late last month by the country’s constitutional council, may be at a lower rate but imposed for the rest of its five-year mandate, not just two years as previously proposed, the Financial Times reported. It is also to divert €2bn in extra funds into state-backed job creation schemes in a bid to meet President François Hollande’s bold promise to reverse a trend of fast-rising unemployment by the end of this year.

The government of Socialist President François Hollande on Sunday said that it would consider other ways of imposing a top income-tax rate of 75 percent on high-wealth individuals after the country's top constitutional authority scrapped the plan, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The constitutional watchdog did not reject the principle of a more-stringent tax regime, but rather the way it would have been applied.

Ailing Franco-Belgian lender Dexia SA received the green light from European Union regulators for a restructuring plan that will see large parts of the bank closed, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move will help bring to a close a long-running probe into Dexia, one of Europe's first casualties of the financial crisis, which last month received its third government bailout in four years. European Commission antitrust chief Joaquín Almunia said he expected to give final approval for the restructuring measures on Dec. 28.

Iranian group Tadbir Energy will submit a bid for the Petit-Couronne oil refinery from insolvent owner Petroplus at a court hearing on Tuesday, French daily Le Figaro said, without citing its sources. Tadbir Energy, a unit of the Imam Khomeini foundation, will offer to buy France's oldest refinery with a guarantee to keep the 550 staff it employs, the paper added. Iranian oil imports are forbidden since July in the European Union, the paper said.

After six months keeping the world guessing about whether he had a vision for fixing France's sickly economy, President Francois Hollande has unveiled a battle plan "à la française" to ease companies' labour costs and trim public spending. But the softly-softly pace of adjustment may be too slow to satisfy financial markets after Moody's on Monday became the second credit ratings agency to strip Paris of its AAA rating, citing both a loss of competitiveness and low growth, Reuters reported in an analysis.

France suffered the second downgrade of its sovereign debt rating this year when Moody’s, the US rating agency, removed its triple A ranking on Monday night, the Financial Times reported. It followed a similar move in January by Standard & Poor’s and underscored concerns that the country’s high level of public debt, which has risen above 90 per cent of gross national product, put it in danger of becoming another victim of the eurozone debt crisis. The move will pose a serious test for François Hollande’s socialist administration, in office for only six months.

France and Belgium Thursday agreed to inject a further €5.5 billion ($7 billion) into Dexia SA, putting one of the first European banking casualties of the 2008 financial crisis almost entirely in state hands and adding to the burden of cutting government debt and deficits amid the euro-zone recession, The Wall Street Journal reported. France agreed in the wee hours of the European morning to provide €2.59 billion and Belgium €2.92 billion in exchange for preference shares.