The Republic’s financial regulator is seeking powers from Government to demand that banks hold extra capital to safeguard against hidden risks to the Republic’s economy. Central Bank of Ireland governor Philip Lane told the University College Dublin (UCD) school of economics that, alongside normal risks, the Republic’s dependence on hi-tech multinationals left its banks vulnerable to shocks to this industry, The Irish Times reported.

Royal Bank of Scotland has been accused of “kicking people when they’re down” by enforcing aggressive debt collection policies against customers who own leasehold properties, the Financial Times reported. The taxpayer-owned bank forces mortgage customers who fall into arrears owing to disputes with their freeholder or property management company to repay the debt within 12 months or face repossession, despite a longstanding legal precedent that allows most borrowers to repay mortgage arrears over the remaining term of their loan.

Greek revival is an architectural style involving columns of marble. It’s also a good description of a ridiculed nation’s prestige among investors, involving columns of numbers measuring unexpected economic durability, a Bloomberg View reported. Global investors snapped up 2.5 billion euros worth of Greece’s 10-year bonds last month, the first such offering in nine years. That made the Hellenic Republic's debt the world’s most prized, buoyed by gross domestic product growth that’s outperforming Germany, France and the euro zone.

Cyprus is weighing an early repayment for part of a 2.5 billion-euro ($2.8 billion) Russian loan that dates back to the low point of the financial crisis, two government officials said, after yields on the country’s 10-year debt hit a record low last week, Bloomberg News reported. While the government is seriously considering early repayment, no final decision has been made yet, said one of the officials, who asked not to be named citing the ongoing decision-making process.

Trafigura Group Ltd. will take control of Nyrstar NV, Europe’s biggest zinc smelter, as part of a deal to restructure the struggling company’s debt and steer it away from bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Under the agreement, Trafigura -- Nyrstar’s main shareholder as well as a top supplier, customer and financier -- offered a package of its own debt securities to Nyrstar’s creditors in exchange for them writing off debt.

Italy’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Parmalat against a lower court ruling that it pay $431 million in damages to Citibank in a case stemming from the dairy group’s bankruptcy more than 15 years ago, Reuters reported. Reuters reviewed a copy of the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday. Parmalat, now owned by France’s Lactalis, collapsed in 2003 after the discovery of a 14 billion euro ($15.8 billion) hole in its accounts.

Thomas Cook has told shareholders that it may have been regularly in breach of its own borrowing limits, marking the latest setback for the travel company which is restructuring in the face of shifting consumer habits, the Financial Times reported. The group said on Friday that the board had received external advice that its current interpretation of its financing limits may have led the company to “inadvertently” exceed the borrowing rules in its articles of association.

A proliferation of words for snow reflects the exceptional environment in which Inuit people survive. It is the same for Italian bankers, who have numerous terms for lousy loans, the Financial Times reported. Of these “unlikely to pay” is the most intriguing, implying a default may be a lifestyle choice as valid as designer spectacle frames. The category, worth about €83bn in outstanding loans, has also piqued the interest of foreign investors, including Bain, Bayview and Algebris. If they buy the debt, there could be a return in it. Everyone could end up better off.

Greek utility Public Power Corp (PPC) is considering the securitisation of part of its backlog of unpaid bills, it said in a bourse filing on Thursday, as repayment looms next month on an existing bond, Reuters reported. Chief Executive Manolis Panagiotakis said in January that declining profit was making it harder to issue debt, but was confident PPC would repay a 350 million euro ($394 million) bond due in May. In a brief statement following a report in Ta Nea newspaper, the company said it was examining all available financing options in order to deal with overdue receivables.

French finance minister Bruno Le Maire has challenged the wealthier economies of northern Europe to increase budget spending to revive eurozone growth and cut the risks of another financial crisis, an ambitious proposal likely to raise hackles in Berlin and The Hague, the Financial Times reported. “There are many countries in the eurozone that have the means to invest more,” Mr Le Maire told the Financial Times in an interview in Paris.