Iceland's finance minister said on Monday the government was ready to resume talks with Britain and the Netherlands on Icesave without preconditions and expressed hope a deal could be reached in "not too many weeks", Reuters reported. Earlier this month, Icelanders overwhelmingly rejected the terms of a deal to repay Britain and the Netherlands more than $5 billion lost by foreign savers in Iceland's banking collapse. The spat has held up aid for Iceland's stricken economy. "We are ready to resume talks without preconditions.

The Netherlands and Great Britain are ready to resume talks with Iceland on repayment of over $5 billion lost in the banking crisis, but are waiting for Iceland to propose terms, the Dutch finance ministry said, Reuters reported. "For new talks to be scheduled Iceland should first make a comprehensive proposal taking account of both sides' interests," a spokesman for the ministry said on Monday. He added that Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager and Icelandic Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson spoke last week and agreed that the ball was now in Iceland's court.

The president of Iceland has urged Gordon Brown, UK prime minister, to take personal responsibility for settling the dispute over €3.9bn lost by British and Dutch savers in the Icesave bank after Icelandic voters overwhelmingly rejected a deal to repay the money. Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, whose decision to block the repayment plan triggered Saturday's referendum, told the Financial Times it was "high time" for Mr Brown to "take the matter into his own hands" after more than a year of wrangling.

Icelanders Saturday roundly rejected a deal to repay the U.K. and the Netherlands €3.9 billion ($5.3 billion) lost in the collapse of an Icelandic Internet bank, complicating the island's bid to access badly needed international-aid funding and render normal its relations with the rest of the world, The Wall Street Journal reported. More than 93% of Icelanders voted no in a national referendum, according to preliminary figures published Sunday morning by state broadcaster RUV. It was Iceland's first plebiscite since the island's independence from Denmark in 1944.

The Netherlands will take negotiations with Iceland over a bank debt dispute into account when considering Iceland's hopes to join the European Union, Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen said on Saturday. Like all EU nations, the Netherlands can block Iceland's bid to join the group, which the island nation launched in the wake of the collapse of its financial system in 2008. The Netherlands and Great Britain want Iceland to repay more than $5 billion in compensation the two EU countries paid out to local savers in Icelandic online banks after the collapse.

On March 6th Icelanders go to the polls to vote in an historic referendum, The Economist reported in a commentary introducing a reader debate. They must decide whether to accept or reject a deal made by their government to repay to the British and Dutch authorities €3.9 billion ($5.3 billion) lost by British and Dutch savers in Landsbanki, a failed Icelandic bank. Arguments on both sides have been fierce.

Workers at General Motors Co.'s European arm, Adam Opel GmbH, produced a list of demands Tuesday for managers, aimed at minimizing job losses as the business undergoes a mammoth restructuring, Dow Jones reported. Members of the European Metalworkers' Federation and affiliated unions in Belgium, Germany, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands and the U.K. gathered in Brussels to coordinate a response to measures drawn up by management to reduce a crippling overcapacity. Leading German trade unionist Klaus Franz complained at a lack of communication from GM. "There have been no discussions," he said.

Dutch startup Sellaband, which enabled music fans to invest in their favorite bands, last week on Friday requested provisional suspension of payments in their home country. It was promptly granted by an Amsterdam Court, and was this morning changed into full bankruptcy. The news of the bankruptcy led to a flurry of reports about Sellaband calling it quits for good – or as we like to say, hitting the deadpool, TechCrunch reported. Now it appears that there’s a chance the startup may live to fight another fight after all.

The Icelandic government said top officials from Iceland, Britain and the Netherlands would be joined by Icelandic opposition leaders at talks later on Friday on the so-called Icesave issue, Reuters reported. An Icelandic government official said Icelandic Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson, Dutch Finance Minister Wouter Bos and British Financial Services Minister Paul Myners would attend the talks, along with the leaders of Iceland's main opposition parties. "The purpose of the meeting is to exchange information and discuss the situation," the Icelandic official said by telephone.

When it comes to rescuing banks, the Swedes are earning a reputation as trendsetters. First they set a standard for recovering from disaster; now they want to export their idea for how to pay for it, The New York Times reported. The country went through its own crippling banking crisis during the early 1990s, after the bursting of a domestic credit bubble. It rebounded relatively smoothly through an aggressive bailout policy built around nationalization and carving the troubled assets of banks off into a so-called bad bank.