Waterford Wedgwood PLC , the maker of classic china and crystal, filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday after attempts to restructure the struggling business or find a buyer failed. Administrators from business advisory firm Deloitte were appointed to run the company's businesses in Britain and Northern Ireland, while a Deloitte partner in the Irish Republic was appointed as receiver of Waterford Wedgwood PLC, the ultimate parent of the U.K. companies, and other Irish subsidiaries.

Ten years after its introduction, the euro faces domestic pressures and has fallen short of expectations for improving trade, said Jeffrey Frankel, a Harvard University economics professor. "The euro probably will come under internal strain," Frankel said in an interview. Membership in the European Union has "reached its limit for the time being," he said, adding there's little popular support to welcome new nations.

Ilmatar , a Helsinki-based hedge fund hammered as Russian equity markets tumbled, said it will close the first of hundreds of hedge funds expected to shut down this year. The fund, named for a god of Finnish myth, dropped about 74 percent in the first 11 months of 2008, according to Bloomberg data. The pool suspended redemptions to "wind up affairs in an orderly fashion," it said in a regulatory filing Monday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition agreed Monday to give Europe's biggest economy an extra stimulus of up to euro50 billion ($70 billion) in an effort to cushion it against a deepening recession, senior officials said. The new stimulus package would add to an existing 23 billion euro package of measures that was widely criticized as being too cautious. Leaders of Merkel's right-left "grand coalition" hope to agree on details by Monday.