The leaders of Germany, France and the U.K. called Thursday for the Group of 20 industrial and developing nations to look at ways to cap bankers' bonuses and come up with rules on remuneration in the financial sector at its summit in Pittsburgh Sept. 24, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move marks a change from U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s previous stance regarding imposing mandatory caps on bankers' bonuses. While he agreed with France and Germany on the need to link bonuses to the bank's long-term performance, and not to short-term speculative gains, Mr.

Germany is calling on the world’s largest economies to adopt joint measures to prevent banks from becoming “too big to fail” and holding governments to ransom in future financial crises, the Financial Times reported. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, said on Monday – following a meeting in Berlin with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France – that steps to prevent excessive risk-taking by large banks should rank high on the agenda of the summit of the Group of 20 largest economies in Pittsburgh later this month.

Emergency growth-stimulating policies are still needed to support continental Europe’s fragile economic recovery, even though Germany and France have emerged from recession, a top European Central Bank policymaker has warned. Axel Weber, Germany’s Bundesbank president, made it clear he would not rush to withdraw the extensive measures taken by governments and the ECB – which he said had helped the recent improvement in economic performance in Germany, the Financial Times reported.

Britain was left lagging behind Germany and France today as Europe's two biggest economies officially came out of recession for the first time in a year, The Daily Mail reported. The French and German economies both grew by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of this year, surprising economists who had expected to see a 0.3 per cent fall.

The French are getting thriftier, and that poses a problem for the European economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. For more than a decade, consumer spending has driven growth in France and buoyed the economy of the nations -- now 16 -- that share the euro. The danger for France and for Europe is that this turns into a longer-term trend.

No villas in the south of France for Russia’s top bankers this summer, if Vladimir Putin gets his way, the Financial Times reported. Russia’s prime minister has sternly warned bank chiefs not to plan any holidays until they have sorted out the financing of the country’s recession-hit economy. It will take a huge effort, with output forecast to fall by about 8 per cent this year and hopes of a quick recovery fading. Even the big state-owned banks that dominate the sector are under pressure, with VTB, the second-largest, warning of possible annual losses.

Strains in pensions systems, in both private and public provision, threaten to turn the financial crisis of the past two years into a social crisis lasting for decades, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned on Tuesday. In its annual analysis of the health of pensions systems globally, the Paris-based organisation found private pension plans lost 23 per cent of their value last year, while higher unemployment “leaves little room for more generous public pensions”, the Financial Times reported.

PSA Peugeot Citroen, Europe’s second-largest carmaker, said it may have an operating loss of as much as €2 billion ($2.8 billion) this year as sales decline and people buy smaller, less costly autos, Bloomberg reported. Peugeot rose as much as 3.5 percent in Paris trading after the company said European unit sales may fall 12 percent this year, better than a 20 percent drop forecast April 22, as governments pay people to scrap old cars and buy new ones. The loss will be €1 billion to €2 billion, it said.

A plan to tighten financial-market regulation is pitting the U.K., home of Europe's financial center, against other members of the bloc, The Wall Street Journal reported. At a European Union summit starting Thursday, a key issue will be how much power should be handed to regulatory bodies that the EU's executive arm, the European Commission, wants to establish, and who will head them. The U.K.'s resistance to the EU plan comes amid tensions among British officials over financial regulation. In a speech Wednesday, Mervyn King, the head of the Bank of England, warned that the U.K.

London or Paris may become the hub for the resolution of dozens of lawsuits related to banks’ and investment funds’ exposure to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, Luxembourg’s Treasury and Budget Minister Luc Frieden said. The nation’s courts have dealt with more than 20 lawsuits and will get hundreds more in the coming months from investors seeking compensation from banks, funds and auditors for losses.