Headlines

German free music streaming service Roccatune has officially filed for insolvency, TechCrunch reported. After weeks of silence on their situation, Roccatune CEO Constantin Thyssen has now announced the news on their company blog. He puts the blame for the insolvency on a failed round of financing. Roccatune was a kind of Last.FM - streaming music sponsored by advertising. Users could look up their preferred tracks, listen to it from the website and make their own playlists.

Icelandic lawmakers began a final debate on Thursday on a politically sensitive bill to authorise paying back Britain and the Netherlands more than $5 billion lost in Icelandic deposit accounts last year, Reuters reported. Parliament is expected to approve the government-sponsored bill, the passage of which is seen as key if Iceland hopes to receive further aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other lenders. A majority in the Icelandic parliament's budget committee thrashed out some final amendments this week, paving the way for approval when the vote takes place.

The head of Britain’s top banking watchdog supports the idea of new global taxes on financial transactions, warning that a “swollen” financial sector paying excessive salaries has grown too big for society, the Financial Times reported. Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, says the debate on bankers’ bonuses has become a “populist diversion” and that more drastic measures may be needed to cut the financial sector down to size.

Lloyds Banking Group Plc may sell part of its fund management business, including a possible initial public offering of Scottish Widows, to raise cash after its bailout, two people familiar with the talks said. Lloyds is in the early stages of assessing options for Scottish Widows, its 194 year-old money management and insurance division, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private, Bloomberg reported. The bank may also sell Clerical Medical, a provider of investment products and pensions, the people said. The takeover of U.K.

East Star Airlines, the debt-laden private airline based in central China's Wuhan City, officially went bankrupt after its restructuring application was rejected Thursday, the Xinhua news agency reported. The Intermediate People's Court in Wuhan City said the plan submitted by the East Star Group and ChinaEquity was unfeasible and failed to meet the conditions for a legal restructuring. ChinaEquity, an investment company founded in 1999 in Beijing, had promised to invest 200 million to 300 million yuan ($29 million to $44 million) for the restructuring plan.

French banks may have survived the financial crisis better than most. But the collapse of Natixis was a full-blown debacle to compare with the worst of them, The Wall Street Journal reported in an analysis. Now, with a €38 billion ($54.36 billion) guarantee from mutually owned parent BPCE, the troubled investment bank may finally have a fair chance of standalone success. The deal also removes the very real systemic risk Natixis posed to the French financial system. Read more. (Subscription required.)

DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. and Julius Baer Holding AG are among potential buyers of ING Groep NV’s private banking operations, three people familiar with the matter said. Amsterdam-based ING, the biggest Dutch financial-services company, is seeking at least $1.8 billion for the assets, two of the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity, Bloomberg reported. DBS, ANZ Bank and Julius Baer are among companies picked by ING to enter final bidding for its Asian and Swiss private banking units as early as next week, they said.

The German government might drop its opposition to Belgian-based financial investor RHJ International as a buyer for General Motors' European unit Opel, Bild newspaper reported on Thursday. Berlin could be willing to accept RHJ if it teamed up with an international partner from the car industry, the mass-selling daily said, without saying where it obtained the information. The German government had so far favored Canadian car-parts supplier Magna over RHJ, which aims to shrink the carmaker to return it to profit.

General Motors Co. is now considering whether it should retain its Opel and Vauxhall operations in Europe, a strategic reversal that raises new questions about the struggling car maker's direction and creates complications with the governments of Germany and Russia, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A payment dispute between Russian pharmacy chain 36.6 and drugs distributor Protek heated up on Tuesday when Protek said it was suing for the bankruptcy of 36.6's drug making unit Veropharm, Reuters reported. Veropharm acted as the guarantor in a 22 million rouble ($697,300) deal between Protek and another unit of 36.6 and Protek said the guarantee made Veropharm liable for payment in the deal, which it said it never received. Russia's largest pharmacy chain, 36.6 owes a total of 225 million roubles to Protek, the owner of Russia's second largest drug retailer, Rigla.