An average of almost seven Irish companies went bust every day from October 1-25, according to the latest figures from the credit risk analysis firm Vision-net, the Irish Examiner reported. Vision-net’s figures, covering the period between October 1 and 25, show that 168 companies were declared insolvent - up 39% on the same month last year. Of those, 110 were liquidated, 54 entered receivership, and an examiner was appointed to four companies.

Four out of five Supreme Court judges have found the High Court was entitled to jail Seán Quinn jnr for three months over “outrageous” contempt of court orders restraining the stripping of assets from the Quinn’s international property group, the Irish Times reported.

Investors in two European property funds at the failed investment firm Custom House Capital have been told that winding up the company behind the funds is the cheapest way to recover more than a third of their money on one fund and a fifth on the other.Accountants appointed to manage the properties by the Central Bank last year have recommended investors vote to wind up Custom House Capital Investment Property Funds plc in a ballot by a deadline of November 9th.

A former Barclays banker who is among the new shareholders in the National Asset Management Agency’s ownership company was involved in a scheme to remove toxic assets from Barclay’s books that a top UK regulator described as “pushing the envelope too far”, the Irish Times reported. Nama yesterday said Irish Life had sold its 17 per cent stake in the special purpose vehicle that owns the loans agency to London company Walbrook Capital. One of the firms’s three founders is Australian lawyer Michael Keeley, who worked for the structured credit division of UK bank Barclays.

Banks must face up to the issue of restructuring rather than just deferring problem SME loans, the deputy governor of the Central Bank said yesterday, the Irish Times reported. Matthew Elderfield also warned an audience of compliance officers that the Central Bank will conduct a third series of stress tests on Irish banks over the next year to satisfy itself that they were now sufficiently capitalised for the medium term.

The Central Bank has strongly criticised banks for their slow progress in tackling the mortgage crisis, saying the extent of their efforts to fix the problems showed that “wait and see” had become the strategy of choice for lenders, the Irish Times reported. In a strongly worded speech to a conference of bankers, the Central Bank’s head of banking regulation Fiona Muldoon said that the banks were behaving like teenagers in responding to its requests to deal with the problem with mortgages.

Family members of bankrupt businessman Seán Quinn’s family have claimed a receiver appointed over their personal assets by the former Anglo Irish Bank is not independent but biased towards the bank on grounds including that several of his staff worked at a senior level for the bank before and since its nationalisation, the Irish Timesreported.

Aer Lingus is seeking pay restraint for a four-year period from staff in return for providing a once-off financial contribution to help address the substantial deficit that exists in a pension scheme for its general workers, the Irish Times reported. It also warned that current workers and deferred members of the scheme, which it operates jointly with the Dublin Airport Authority, would have received just 4 per cent of their entitlement had it been wound up on the basis of the €748 million deficit in the scheme that existed on May 31st.

Poland's state road operator has been hit with a 1.2 billion zloty ($385 million) compensation claim by Irish builder SRB Civil Engineering, the latest fallout from a troubled construction spree ahead of the Euro 2012 soccer tournament, Reuters reported. SRB said it was forced to walk away from a contract to build stretches of a key Polish highway because of failures by roads operator GDDKiA and wants to be compensated for losses it said it incurred. But GDDKiA said it was the contractor who was at fault and that it had to withdraw from the contract, not the other way round.

Senior executives from Spain’s second-biggest bank, BBVA, met National Asset Management Agency officials yesterday as the Spanish authorities announced further details of a “bad bank” to purge toxic loans from its lenders, the Irish Times reported. Spanish bankers and government officials have been studying the Irish “bad bank” model as Madrid sets up a vehicle to acquire toxic real-estate loans and repossessed properties from the banks.