A German maker of yachts and naval vessels agreed to buy insolvent shipyard Peene in a rare deal as the shipbuilding sector in Europe's biggest economy crumbles, Reuters reported. Bremen, Germany-based Luerssen Group is paying less than 20 million euros ($26.3 million) to buy former Communist East Germany's biggest naval shipbuilder, Peene's insolvency administrator Berthold Brinkmann said on Monday. The deal to buy Peene - which makes patrol boats for the coast guard and oil spill response vessels, among other - will make Luerssen Germany's biggest maker of naval surface vessels.

Germany on Wednesday evening agreed to lay the foundations for a eurozone banking union but warned that creating a common bank supervisor must not raise “very dangerous” expectations of Berlin helping to bail out foreign banks, the Financial Times reported. In a pivotal move that is likely to clear the way for the European Central Bank to take oversight of the euro area’s biggest financial institutions from national supervisors, Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, said he was willing to compromise on some of his longstanding objections to the scheme.

Perrot GmbH & Co. has been making bell-tower clocks for 150 years, but the order from Saudi Arabia was on a new scale: a 140-foot-diameter clock, installed at a height of more than 1,300 feet, in the heart of the holy city of Mecca. The family-owned company from the Black Forest is building its exports beyond its traditional European base, expanding ties with fast-growing developing countries.

Düsseldorf private real estate group WGF has filed for insolvency in the form of debtor in possession – management remains but under court-appointed supervision - after reporting a €71m loss for 2011. A delay in publication of 2011 accounts has led to its bonds being suspended earlier this week, Property Investor Europe reported. The losses derived from strategic disinvestments and balance sheet measures, especially asset revaluations, WGF said in a statement announcing the insolvency application.

Germany’s economy may be skidding towards recession, the Bundesbank has warned, after it cut its 2013 growth forecast from 1.6 per cent to almost 0.4 per cent, the Irish Times reported. Europe’s largest economy will grow just 0.7 per cent this year, the central bank forecast, with contraction in the fourth quarter and likely stagnation in the first quarter of next year. The bank attributed the slowdown to a growing chill in the country’s important export sector.

For the past year, as Chancellor Angela support has struggled to forge a euro-crisis solution that will pass muster with German voters, Peter Bofinger, a 58-year-old University of Wuerzburg economics professor, has been a leading voice among her economic opposition, Bloomberg Markets reports in its January issue. Where Merkel has preached austerity, Bofinger has called for stimulus; where she has demanded fiscal responsibility from debtor nations, he has pleaded for collective liability among all members of the single European currency.

Some of the loudest objections to EU banking union plans have come from Germany, and particularly from its savings banks, or Sparkassen, which believe they are central to the country’s tradition of strong regional industries, the Financial Times reported. They say home regulators better understand their characteristics and way of doing business.

Germany is standing firm in its opposition to another major write-down of Greece's debt ahead of a meeting Tuesday that aims to clear the way for the next disbursement of aid to Athens. "A haircut remains unimaginable," Finance Ministry spokeswoman Marianne Kothe said at a regular government news conference Monday, as euro-zone finance ministers work to thrash out a deal.

Nervous investors Wednesday paid Germany for the privilege of parking their funds at a bond sale for the first time since July as renewed concerns over Greek finances stoked an appetite for the euro zone's safest securities, The Wall Street Journal reported. Investors are flocking back to German debt as Greece's problems intensify and the positive impact of the European Central Bank's bond-buy pledge starts to fade.

The main donor and the main recipient of European Union subsidies, Germany and Poland differ on the need to cut the bloc’s budget for 2014-2020, their leaders said Wednesday ahead of an EU summit next week, the Emerging Europe blog reported. The bloc’s 27 members will likely struggle at a summit on Nov. 22-23 to agree on a proposed budget of some €1 trillion ($1.3 trillion). Germany and other states that pay more into the bloc than they receive from it would like to cut their contributions, lowering farm subsidies and funds for the less-affluent members. U.K.