Top shareholder Air France-KLM refused a plea for cash on Thursday to rescue Alitalia, saying a new business plan was not enough to save the stricken Italian carrier unless its creditors also write off some of its huge debts, Reuters reported. Alitalia, which was privatised in 2008, has been unprofitable for more than a decade and has been stuck in a months-long tussle with Air France-KLM over whether to keep their strategic and financial partnership alive.

Air France-KLM, the French-Dutch airline, said Thursday that it had written off the entire value of its 25 percent holding in its partner Alitalia, raising doubts that it will take part in a plan to inject 300 million euros into the struggling Italian flag carrier, The International New York Times reported.

The Dutch financial services group ING said on Wednesday that it would pay 1.13 billion euros ($1.55 billion) to the Dutch government in November as it moves closer to repaying the state aid it received during the financial crisis, The New York Times DealBook blog reported. As of its next payment on Nov. 6, ING will have repaid €8.5 billion in principal of the €10 billion it received from the Dutch government in 2008, plus an additional €2.8 billion in interest and premiums.

The Dutch lender Rabobank admitted on Tuesday to criminal wrongdoing by its employees and agreed to pay more than $1 billion in criminal and civil penalties to settle investigations by United States, British and other authorities into its role in setting global benchmark interest rates. Its chief executive stepped down immediately, The New York Times DealBook blog reported. The bank is the fifth financial firm to settle accusations that its employees manipulated the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

The chief executive of Air France-KLM, the largest foreign shareholder in Alitalia, said on Wednesday that he had not ruled out the possibility of participating in a fresh bailout of the struggling Italian flagship carrier as it scrambles to produce a plan to shore up its dwindling cash reserves, the International Herald Tribune reported. But given the weak financial position of the French-Dutch group, which owns 25 percent of Alitalia, any assistance would be subject to strict conditions, he said.

Air France-KLM will strengthen its role in Italian airline Alitalia SpA, Italian transport minister Maurizio Lupi said on Monday, Reuters reported. "I expect that Air France will strongly reaffirm that Alitalia is a strategic asset for Air France, and therefore that there will be a strengthening of Air France's role," Lupi said at the margins of an industry conference in Milan.

The Netherlands’ newly inaugurated King Willem-Alexander has made his first annual appearance before parliament one to remember, with a speech effectively announcing the end of the generous Dutch welfare state, the Financial Times reported. The king delivered the speech as part of the annual celebration of “Prinsjesdag”, or “Prince’s Day”, when the Dutch live up to their money-conscious reputation by turning the government’s presentation of its budget for the forthcoming year into a whimsical political festival.

The Dutch government reached a deal on an austerity package for 2014 in a bid to meet European Union budget requirements despite fierce resistance to more belt-tightening at home and concerns that it could further harm the already struggling economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The coalition government struck a deal on €6 billion ($8 billion) in tax increases and spending cuts, Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said Tuesday. "I'm satisfied that we have already reached a deal now," he said. Details will be given Sept.

Haarlem, officially the best shopping city in the Netherlands, looks like many picturesque Dutch towns: a medieval church surrounded by a hedonistic cornucopia of pedestrian shopping streets. Normally those streets are filled with confident window-shoppers, but these are not normal times, and Dutch consumers are feeling anything but confident, the Financial Times reported. Household spending has been falling for three straight years, and it dropped again 2.4 per cent year on year in the second quarter, dragging the entire economy down with it.

Magyar Telecom BV, the owner of Hungarian telecommunications company Invitel, asked its bondholders to vote on a debt-for-equity swap today as the company seeks to reduce borrowings and attract new investment, Bloomberg reported. Magyar Telecom, controlled by Mid Europa Partners LLP, set an Aug. 15 deadline for responses to its restructuring proposal and has support from holders of as much as 65 percent of its notes, it said in an Aug. 13 statement. It’s preparing a scheme of arrangement, a U.K.