Bank of Ireland may sell portfolios of further problem loans after it completes the offloading of €375 million of non-performing buy-to-let mortgages from its balance sheet through a bond market refinancing, its chief executive said on Thursday. Speaking to members of the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Francesca McDonagh said “We are certainly looking at all options and that could include a sale of portfolios” of loans, as the bank seeks to lower its non-performing loans (NPLs) to about 5 per cent, The Irish Times reported.

German factory orders have deteriorated at the fastest pace since the financial crisis as the sector suffered from rising Brexit uncertainties and a slowdown in the global economy, the Financial Times reported. New factory orders fell 4.2 per cent in February from the previous month as foreign orders slumped, according to provisional data from Germany’s statistics office released on Thursday. The drop was the biggest fall since January 2017, according to Factset. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected a small month-on-month rise.

Can the EU bind future governments to promises made by previous prime ministers? It’s a Brussels dilemma that goes beyond the difficulties posed by a certain soon to be departing member state, the Financial Times reported. Greece is also becoming a test case for how the EU can wield control in a country that has escaped its leash in one sense. Athens exited nearly a decade of European bailouts last summer. After receiving hundreds of billions of euros in return for painful and swingeing economic reforms, the country is back borrowing on the debt markets.

Almost a million high earners in the UK have been hit by steep increases in their tax bills because thresholds set more than a decade ago do not rise in line with inflation, according to analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In 2008, the government set a £100,000 income threshold above which the tax-free personal allowance would be gradually withdrawn, creating a band in which people pay 60p of every £1 they earn to the exchequer, the Financial Times reported. The number of affected people has risen rapidly, from 647,000 in 2007-08 to 986,000.

Five years after the European Central Bank broke ground by cutting interest rates below zero, its officials are considering a redesign of the contentious policy as they face up to an economy and banking system that could remain fragile for a lot longer, the Financial Times reported. ECB president Mario Draghi pushed the world’s leading central banks into uncharted territory in 2014 when the eurozone deposit rate — what commercial banks pay to hold money at the ECB — went negative.

The collapse of budget airline WOW Air last month will dent Iceland’s economic growth this year and cause some losses in the banking system, the country’s central bank said in a Financial Stability report on Thursday. WOW Air, which had 1,000 employees, halted operations and canceled all future flights on March 28 after efforts to raise more funds had failed, Reuters reported. It was the latest budget airline to collapse as the European airline sector grapples with over-capacity and high fuel costs.

Three investors including Italian fashion entrepreneur Renzo Rosso are eyeing a possible bid for luxury label Roberto Cavalli, according to a document filed by the company with a court in Milan as it seeks breathing space from creditors, Reuters reported. The fashion company on Monday filed a request with a bankruptcy court for 120 days of protection from creditors to reach an agreement on its debt and find a new investor, after it struggled to reboot sales and faced a cash crunch.

France’s services sector fell back into contraction in March, according to a closely watched economic survey, as a series of anti-government protests continued to disrupt the economy, the Financial Times reported. The IHS Markit purchasing managers’ index, which gathers data by polling corporate executives, fell to 49.1 in March, down from 50.2 in February and below the 50 mark which separates expansion from contraction. The reading slightly bettered a Reuters poll of economists, which had forecast a figure of 48.7.

Greece cleared a key hurdle toward receiving around 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in cash for debt relief, as the European Commission said the country has fulfilled all reform conditions required in its latest post-bailout audit, Bloomberg News reported. In a report reviewing Greece’s record in completing the overhauls attached to further aid, the EU’s executive arm paved the way for a final decision to be taken by euro-area finance ministers when they meet in Bucharest, Romania, later this week.

Russia’s Sberbank said on Wednesday it was committed to improving the performance of Croatian food group Fortenova following reports that it is already in talks to sell its newly acquired stake, Reuters reported. Agrokor, the largest firm in the Balkans with 52,000 staff, was put under state-run administration after it was consumed by debts built up during an ambitious expansion drive. On April 1 Agrokor changed its name to Fortenova Grupa and Sberbank, formerly the biggest creditor of Agrokor, is now the biggest single shareholder with a 39.2 percent stake.