The European Central Bank has come under renewed pressure in Germany, after a group of academics and business people filed a complaint at the country’s highest court over the monetary policymakers’ mass bond-buying programme, the Financial Times reported. The ECB has faced repeated criticism from the economic and political establishment in the eurozone’s largest economy over the policies it has adopted to fight the threat of falling prices.

In Europe’s battle with the International Monetary Fund over Greece, Germany has a way to win, The Wall Street Journal reported. Germany, Europe’s dominant economic power, is leaning heavily on the IMF to accept hypothetical assurances that Greece’s debt burden will be addressed in the future if needed, rather than the definite and far-reaching debt relief that the IMF wanted, according to people familiar with the talks. Berlin believes the IMF will have to accept what’s on offer, even if IMF staff are unhappy about it, these people say.

Why is conventional German thinking on macroeconomics so peculiar? And does it matter? the Financial Times reported in a commentary. The answer to the second question is that it matters a great deal. A part of the answer to the first is that Germany is a creditor. The financial crisis has given it a dominant voice in eurozone affairs. This is a matter of might, not right. Creditors’ interests are important. But they are partial, not general, interests.

The International Monetary Fund Monday urged Germany to step up investment and accelerate structural reforms to boost its growth prospects and alleviate the negative effects of a rapidly aging society, The Wall Street Journal reported. “More progress on structural reforms would revitalize potential growth and enhance the authorities’ leadership at the European level in this area,” the Washington-based fund said in a statement.

The euro zone is tying itself in knots over whether to limit banks' holdings of their own governments' bonds or to make them set aside more capital against home sovereign risk, Reuters reported in an analysis. Germany, the bloc's dominant power, has made such "risk reduction" measures, as it calls them, a prior condition before it will accept any further "risk sharing" in Europe's banking union through a common deposit insurance scheme.

Lenders to struggling German oil and gas safety tools producer Bartec are set to appoint a financial restructuring adviser by the beginning of next week, according to two sources close to the situation. Lenders held a beauty parade on Wednesday to appoint a restructuring adviser as they push for a bigger equity injection from the company's private equity-owner Charterhouse. Three firms - Houlihan Lokey, Deloitte and Macquarie - are in contention, with a successful party likely to be appointed by Monday May 9, the sources said.

Paymill, a one-stop solution which enables merchants to easily accept credit and debit cards, announced it made the decision to go for a preliminary insolvency in self-administration. With this decision, the German online payment provider hopes to bring the merger and acquisition negotiations to a successful result, Ecommerce News reported. There were already some rumors about Paymill filing for bankruptcy in the German media, but the online payment provider chose to share the news itself on the company’s blog.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said Monday he is confident Greece and its creditors will agree on an assessment of the country’s bailout program, although he cast doubt on whether an agreement could be reached this week, The Wall Street Journal reported. Greece and its creditors—the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund—are in talks on the economic overhauls Athens must implement before the country can receive fresh loans. “We will be successful in the troika’s [bailout] review with Greece,” Mr.

Europe’s largest investment bank Deutsche Bank has emerged on the list of bidders this week for one of the National Asset Management Agency’s last big portfolio sales, the Irish Times reported. The Frankfurt-based bank joins a joint offer from Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs and CarVal, a US investor in distressed assets, on Nama’s sale of two portfolios which have a combined nominal value of €4.7 billion, according to sources. Others bidders include Lone Star and Cerberus.

German prosecutors said on Thursday they would press criminal charges against the family behind drugstore chain Schlecker, which folded four years ago, Reuters reported. The chain's founder, 71-year-old Anton Schlecker, is accused of having siphoned assets from the company on 36 occasions while in full knowledge of its looming bankruptcy, according to the prosecutors' office in the city of Stuttgart. It did not provide a figure on the sums involved, but a spokesman for the prosecutors said several million euros had been illegally diverted from funds available to repay creditors.