Troubled German shipbuilder P+S Werften, which operates two of the country's biggest shipyards, has asked some of its customers to pay for ships in advance to bridge a liquidity shortfall and avert insolvency, Reuters reported. New Chief Executive Ruediger Fuchs has approached Danish shipper DFDS, passenger ferry operator Scandlines and Greenland's Royal Arctic Line, a P+S spokesman said on Wednesday. P+S had planned to file for insolvency on Wednesday, the spokesman said, the possibility of receiving funds from customers gave Fuchs a couple more days to come up with a rescue plan.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel faces one of the toughest choices of her career in the coming weeks: whether to risk the unraveling of the euro zone—or her government, The Wall Street Journal reported. After a summer lull, Greece is again Ms. Merkel's biggest headache. The Greek government, struggling with depression-like conditions that have pushed the economy to the brink, is likely to need many billions of euros of additional aid to avoid bankruptcy.

The German government stuck to its insistence yesterday that Greece must comply with the reform and austerity conditions agreed in its €130 billion rescue package, but Berlin did not flatly reject any extension of the debt-repayment terms it faces, the Irish Times reported. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, will meet Antonis Samaras, the Greek prime minister, for bilateral talks in Berlin next week, at which “everything can be put on the table”, according to Steffen Seibert, the chancellor’s spokesman.

A new challenge to the European Stability Mechanism, the eurozone’s permanent €500bn rescue fund, has been filed in the German constitutional court, seeking to delay ratification by Germany until it has sought the opinion of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the Financial Times reported.

Suggestions of a split in German policy over the way ahead in tackling the crisis in the eurozone, between the government in Berlin and the Bundesbank in Frankfurt, are exaggerated, according to officials in the German capital, the Financial Times reported. But battle lines are opening between the leading political parties in the country over the need for the largest economy in the eurozone to play a more generous role in supporting its debt-laden partners, as the main contenders seek to break a stalemate in the polls 13 months ahead of next year’s general election.

Italy needs moral support from Germany but not its cash, Prime Minister Mario Monti said in an interview published on Sunday as German conservatives renewed calls for Greece to leave the euro zone, Reuters reported. The Italian leader also told weekly magazine Der Spiegel that he was concerned about growing anti-euro, anti-German and anti-European Union sentiment in the parliament in Rome.

Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP’s U.K. administrators proposed liquidating the defunct law firm’s British assets last week a day after the German operations were put in insolvency proceedings by a Frankfurt court, Bloomberg reported. The U.K. partnership, which includes the London and Paris offices, should be moved into liquidation, administrators at BDO LLP said in a July 27 regulatory filing. White & Case LLP attorney Andreas Kleinschmidt was appointed preliminary administrator July 26 in Germany, according to the country’s online insolvency registry. Dewey’s U.S.

Deutsche Bank AG co-Chief Executive Officer Anshu Jain is cutting compensation to placate shareholders as Europe’s debt crisis slashes financial-industry jobs, leaving workers fewer opportunities to defect, Bloomberg reported. “We need to further address both the absolute level of compensation and the relative balance between rewards for shareholders and those for employees,” Jain said yesterday on a conference call.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, Wednesday approved state aid for two German state-controlled Landesbanken--BayernLB and NordLB--on the condition both banks undergo substantial restructuring in the coming years, Dow Jones reported. For BayernLB, the commission approved capital measures the bank received in 2008 and 2009 on the condition it would be fundamentally restructured and it repays 5 billion euros ($6.1 billion) of state aid over the next seven years.

Even as Germany tried Tuesday to brush off a warning that the cost of supporting its euro zone partners could damage Berlin’s stellar credit rating, market pressure was making it more likely that Spain could be the next euro member to need a helping hand, the International Herald Tribune reported. Germany, along with the Netherlands and Luxembourg, found themselves needing to defend their economic fundamentals after Moody’s Investors Service late Monday issued a “negative” outlook for those countries’ top-flight, triple-A credit ratings because of the risk of more euro zone bailouts.