Germany

German solar-power company Sovello GmbH filed for insolvency and will attempt to restructure in the process, Bloomberg reported. Sovello, based in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, cannot pay its debts and has asked the Dessau insolvency court to be allowed to restructure under its management, the company said in a statement on its website today. Attorney Bernd Depping has been appointed as preliminary administrator, the company said. “We have checked alternative scenarios to regain solvency,” Chief Executive Officer Reiner Beutel said in the statement.

Germany is facing a unique dilemma as many euro-zone counterparts debate how much fiscal belt-tightening their citizens can withstand to restore sound public finances: how much inflation it can stomach to help its southern neighbors, The Wall Street Journal reported. On Friday, Germany's central bank rejected speculation that it is softening its anti-inflation rigor, as its leader tried to keep a largely economic debate about restoring growth in Southern Europe from damaging the Bundesbank's cherished reputation in Europe's largest economy.

French President-elect Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have each been prescribing the same salve — growth — to ease Europe’s economic ills. But the medicines vary sharply on either side of the Rhine, The Washington Post reported. And though European leaders will meet later this month to try to work out their differences, the 17 countries that share the euro currency remain far from abandoning the debt-funding spending cuts that Germany has long championed. Hollande’s version of growth involves spending more money to stimulate jobs and economic recovery.

Countries around the world envy Germany's economic success and look up to it as a role model. But a closer look reveals a much bleaker picture. Only a few are benefiting from the boom, while stagnant wages and precarious employment conditions are making it difficult for millions to make ends meet, Spiegel Online reported. "Prosperity for all" was once the credo of Ludwig Erhard, the first economics minister of postwar Germany. This promise shaped the country for decades and set it apart from many other economies. But how much is this promise still worth today?

German aluminium smelter Voerde Aluminium launched insolvency proceedings on Friday but said the business would continue to operate and it would seek to restructure, Reuters reported. The company, which produces around 115,000 tonnes of aluminium annually and has 410 employees, said it had hit liquidity problems because aluminium prices had fallen since July last year while production costs have risen it. The smelter was sold by British group Corus in 2009 to BaseMet, owned in turn by investor Gary Klesch.

He is not the best-known player in the euro crisis, but over the next couple of years Jens Weidmann, who this week celebrated his first anniversary as president of Germany’s Bundesbank, will be one of the most important. The euro zone’s future hinges on when and how its peripheral economies can return to growth. And, put crudely, their ability to do so will depend a lot on whether Mr Weidmann and the Bundesbank will tolerate higher inflation in Germany, The Economist reported. Asking a central banker to accept higher inflation may seem like asking a cardinal to accept more sin.

Several parties have shown interest in German solar company Q-Cells since it filed for insolvency earlier this month, including domestic and foreign investors, an administrator said on Monday, Reuters reported. "Our goal is to save most of the company and as many jobs as possible," preliminary insolvency administrator Henning Schorisch said in a statement, noting financial and strategic investors were among the parties but not giving further details. "The coming weeks will now show how big interest is," he said.

Private equity firm Penta Investments has made an offer for German insolvent drug store chain Schlecker, less than a month after buying a 40 percent stake in Polish retailer EM&F, Reuters reported. "We made a non-binding offer on Friday last week," a spokesman for Penta told Reuters on Friday, confirming a report in German weekly magazine Der Spiegel. He declined to provide details of the offer. Unlisted Schlecker, which competes with privately held peers Rossmann and dm, filed for insolvency in January after struggling to secure funds against a gloomy economic backdrop.

Switzerland agreed Thursday to a revised tax deal with Germany under which it would pay billions of dollars on funds hidden in its banks by German tax dodgers, the latest step in an international charm offensive that is meant to salvage at least some of the country’s famous banking secrecy, the International Herald Tribune reported.

It wasn't so long ago that people viewed Q-Cells as an energy company of the future. At one point, it was the world's largest manufacturer of solar cells and quarter after quarter, it topped analysts' expectations. The company proved to be a money-making machine even during the financial crisis, with some believing it might one day grow to become part of Germany's DAX index of benchmark companies on the stock exchange. But Q-Cells' insolvency comes as a great shock to the Germany's solar industry, Spiegel Online reported.