Insolvent German home improvement retailer Praktiker has attracted a second offer for its stores, this time for more of the shops, two people familiar with the situation said, Reuters reported. The bid comes as talks over the acquisition of Praktiker's upmarket unit Max Bahr by rival Hellweg are already approaching a final stage. The new bid comes from Praktiker's own management with the backing of a group of funds and would see 175 Praktiker and Max Bahr stores being taken over, the sources said.

Germany’s central bank, the Deutsche Bundesbank, sounded an alarm Monday, warning that urban real estate in the country could in some cases be significantly overvalued, against a backdrop of low interest rates, The Wall Street Journal Real Time Economics blog reported. In a report issued Monday, the Bundesbank said that prices in urban housing markets could be as much as 10% higher than the level suggested by fundamentals, such as demographic and economic factors.

Struggling PV systems supplier, CENTROSOLAR, is seeking creditor protection via the Local Court of Hamburg, PV Tech reported. CENTROSOLAR AG and CENTROSOLAR Sonnenstromfabrik GmbH are seeking to restructure debts under the court's ‘protective shield proceedings’ process and will continue operations during the three-month period allocated under the system. The company said in a statement that Renusol GmbH, CENTROSOLAR America Inc. and CENTROPLAN GmbH were not part of the insolvency proceedings as these subsidiaries were fully financed and were operating profitably or near profitability.

Insolvent German home improvement store chain Praktiker group on Thursday said exclusive talks were under way to sell its upmarket brand Max Bahr stores to rival Hellweg. Praktiker, a household name in Europe's biggest economy, is being sold off piecemeal after the administrator failed to find a buyer for the whole group. "The creditor committee today decided to conduct final negotiations about a takeover with the Hellweg bidder consortium," Praktiker said in a statement that cited Max Bahr's insolvency administrator.

Germany has insisted that eurozone countries impose losses on all bondholders in ailing banks before taxpayers’ money can be used to clean up the financial system, a move that would make it harder to activate Europe’s common safety net for lenders, the Financial Times reported. At a meeting of EU finance ministers in Luxembourg, Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, hardened his position on deploying common eurozone funds to cover any big capital shortfalls exposed in next year’s European bank stress test. Berlin is able to veto use of the funds.

Creditors of insolvent German aluminium plant Voerde Aluminium voted to extend production to the end of next year while the search for a buyer continues, a spokesman for Voerde's insolvency administrator said on Monday, Reuters reported. The Voerde smelter, which makes about 10 percent - or 115,000 tonnes - of Germany's yearly aluminium output a year, declared insolvency in May 2012. The plant in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia employs about 280 staff.

A German insolvency court in Coburg Tuesday granted Loewe AG permission to carry out insolvency proceedings under the company's own administration, and the television and entertainment console maker has already received several offers from interested investors in recent days, Loewe said Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company has been under creditor protection since July.

Angela Merkel’s third term, after her overwhelming election victory yesterday, is likely to force a decision on where to spend political capital: on Europe’s ills or Germany’s, Bloomberg reported. While Germany ranks fourth in the global competitiveness study by the World Economic Forum thanks to policies enacted by her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, the challenges are piling up. Merkel must address the aging population, shortfalls in education and infrastructure spending and ballooning pension costs, say policy makers, economists and investors.

Many Germans feel that whoever wins Sunday's election, they should not fund any more bailouts of fellow European countries, whose errant banks are a particular bugbear for Berlin, Reuters reported in an analysis. But a cornerstone of Germany's own banking system, which has already received state bailouts, is facing fresh challenges, increasing the need for reforms which will be very hard for any new government to deliver.

Germany’s pared down vision for Europe’s banking union has suffered a blow after the legal adviser to EU finance ministers largely rejected Berlin’s claim that creating a powerful central executioner to shut failing eurozone banks goes beyond the law. A confidential paper from the Council legal service, obtained by the Financial Times, upholds the foundations of the European Commission’s resolution authority proposal, in spite of Angela Merkel of Germany saying such radical reforms require EU treaty change.