Germany

The administrator of insolvent German chipmaker Qimonda is requesting 1.7 billion euros ($2.23 billion) from its former parent Infineon, claiming Qimonda paid Infineon for a business in 2006 that was negative in value, Reuters reported. In 2006, Qimonda gave new shares to Infineon in return for Infineon's memory business, a deal that is now being probed in an ongoing lawsuit brought by the administrator, Infineon said on Tuesday.

Deutsche Bank AG is closing in on an agreement to pay about €800 million ($1 billion) to settle decade-old claims that a former chief executive officer helped drive German media company Kirch Group into bankruptcy, according to people familiar with the negotiations, The Wall Street Journal reported. The proposed settlement, which would be one of the largest in European history, has been agreed to in principle but had yet to be approved by Deutsche Bank's board as of late Monday, the people said.

The owners of German cable company Primacom have been forced to inject another 20 million euros ($26 million) into the business and restructure its 300 million euros of debt for the second time in a year, Reuters reported. Primacom was taken over in January 2011 by bank lenders including ING Groep and fund managers such as Alcentra Group, Tennenbaum Capital and Avenue Capital following the insolvency of its parent, Primacom AG, in June 2010. This debt for equity swap was achieved through a court procedure at the High Court in London.

German chancellor Angela Merkel told Greece today to make up its mind fast on accepting the painful terms for a new EU-IMF bailout, but the country's political leaders responded by delaying their decision for yet another day, the Irish Times reported. Failure to strike a deal to secure the €130 billion rescue - much of which Germany will fund - risks pushing Athens into a chaotic debt default which could threaten its future in the euro zone.

The Schleckers, once one of Germany's wealthiest families, have lost their multi-billion-euro fortune, they said on Monday, leaving them unable to pump fresh funds into the insolvent Schlecker drugstore chain, Reuters reported. Schlecker, which competes with privately held chains Rossmann and dm, filed for insolvency last week, putting about 30,000 jobs at risk, as struggling European businesses find it increasingly hard to secure funds against a gloomy economic backdrop.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is facing growing political pressure at home to demand stricter fiscal discipline from her eurozone partners at an extraordinary European Union summit in Brussels on Monday. She also faces a potential revolt by conservative members of the German parliament over any call for more taxpayers’ money to bail out the ailing Greek economy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, sharply criticized for her government's prescriptions of austerity as a cure for the euro zone's sovereign-debt crisis, said labor-market reforms and greater European integration also were needed to correct flaws in the makeup of the common currency, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Germany is open to boosting the firepower of the eurozone’s rescue funds to €750bn in exchange for strict budget rules favoured by Berlin in a new fiscal compact for all members of the currency union, the Financial Times reported. Berlin appeared to soften its longstanding resistance to increasing the funds only hours after the International Monetary Fund warned that the eurozone needed more money to build “a larger firewall” to prevent the crisis from spreading to its core economies.

Germany's biggest drugstore chain Schlecker said it is filing for insolvency after failing to secure funds to keep it afloat while it restructures its business, Reuters reported. "Necessary restructuring measures cannot be implemented as quickly as they would need to be, especially as planned bridge financing did not come through," the company said in a statement on Friday. It said its operations would continue and its employees would continue to be paid as part of the insolvency process.

Angela Merkel has given effusive praise for the economic reforms introduced by Italy’s new government of technocrats, marking a clear seal of approval from the German government – in stark contrast to its long-standing doubts about the previous Italian administration, the Financial Times reported. Speaking after her first bilateral summit with Mario Monti, who succeeded Silvio Berlusconi as Italian prime minister in November, the German chancellor lauded the “extraordinarily important and remarkable measures” already taken by his technocratic administration.