Eurozone bank executives have launched a fresh lobbying push to convince policymakers of the dangers of long-term negative interest rates, warning they will hurt savers and pensioners while fuelling price bubbles in riskier assets, the Financial Times reported. Bank chief executives have spent the past two years trying to force the European Central Bank to reverse its negative interest rates, which were first introduced in 2014. Other European central banks including Switzerland and Denmark also have negative rates.

A judge in London has ordered the former owners of Russia’s Trust Bank and their wives to pay the country’s central bank $900m to compensate for their role in an offshore scheme that led to its collapse, the Financial Times reported. Mr Justice Bryan, a judge in the English High Court, ruled on Thursday that Ilya Yurov, Sergei Belyaev, and Nikolai Fetisov had conspired to “evade banking standards” to falsify Trust’s accounts and use the bank’s 1.5m retail deposit base to help fund companies where they were the ultimate beneficiaries.

Deutsche Bank AG and a Singapore based hedge fund bought more debt of an embattled Indian shadow lender, highlighting the growing foreign interest in the discounted assets of the financier at the center of a credit crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Deutsche Bank has almost doubled the debt it holds of Altico Capital India Ltd. to 3 billion rupees ($42.1 million) in the last four months, while Singapore-based Broad Peak Investment Advisers Ltd. has acquired debt of about 1 billion rupees, people familiar with the matter said.

Credit Suisse has hit back against Mozambique in a case in Britain’s High Court, arguing a government guarantee for a $622 million loan - part of a $2 billion debt scandal - is valid and that it is entitled to claim damages, Reuters reported. Mozambique sued the investment bank last year, alongside a number of other defendants, in a bid to cancel the guarantee and seek compensation for losses related to the debt saga, which tipped its economy into crisis. Credit Suisse rejected Mozambique’s arguments in its defense papers and submitted a counter claim, dated Jan.

Slovenia’s largest food retailer Mercator refinanced a debt of its Serbian unit Mercator-S to the value of 90 million euros ($99.8 million) with Serbian bank AIK, Mercator said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. It did not give details of the deal but said the conditions of the refinancing were “much more favourable” than those of the previous syndicated loan which was taken in 2014 and would expire in March. It added the refinancing will improve liqudity of the Serbian unit over the next five years and enable further development of Mercator in Serbia.

When bank executives descended on Davos last year for the annual meeting of the world’s elite, they did so under a cloud. Just a day before the gathering began, UBS issued a profit warning after its predominantly rich clients pulled $13bn of assets from the bank, the Financial Times reported. Here was Switzerland’s largest bank and one of the top global wealth managers sending a distress signal from its own doorstep. The world’s wealthy had apparently turned bearish on the economy because of geopolitical tensions and sluggish growth. It proved to be a sign of things to come.

Deutsche Bank AG has moved an insolvency application against Uttam Galva Steels Ltd. at the National Company Law Tribunal to recover dues against the foreign currency-denominated loans its Singapore branch extended, BloombergQuint reported. Uttam Galva Steels—which had entered into a $20-million credit facility agreement with the lender for its capital and operational needs—had challenged the maintainability of the bank’s application under section 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. The section allows financial creditors to file insolvency application.

Eurozone companies’ demand for bank loans has fallen for the first time in six years, in a worrying sign for the region’s faltering economy and the European Central Bank’s attempt to stimulate more lending, the Financial Times reported. Loan demand fell in the fourth quarter because of lower investment needs and wider availability of alternative finance, according to an ECB survey of 144 banks. The biggest fall was in Spain, with a smaller decline in France. Demand from German companies was still up while in Italy it was flat.

The High Court has approved a Personal Insolvency Arrangement (PIA) allowing a man to write down almost all of his €60 million debts, The Irish Times reported…Mr Justice Mark Sanfey approved a PIA in respect of Enda Patrick Whelan of College Grove, Ennis, Co Clare. Mr Whelan’s creditors include National Asset Loan Management (NALM), a Nama company, which was owed some €56.4 million arising out of personal guarantees he had given in respect of four companies owned by his family.

Swedish oil refiner Nynas, which is owned by Venezuela’s state-run PDVSA and Finland’s Neste Oil, said on Tuesday it planned to reorganize its business in an attempt to disentangle itself from U.S. sanctions imposed on Venezuela, Reuters reported. Nynas said the proposed changes to its ownership structure, backed by both PDVSA and Neste Oil, were filed with the United States’ Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on January 17.