The Netherlands and other fiscally hawkish EU members are calling for further reductions in the planned size and scope of a eurozone budget, a French political priority that has already been squeezed in negotiations in Brussels, the Financial Times reported. French president Emmanuel Macron is leading calls for the single currency to have its own budget to try to shore up its crisis resilience. EU leaders agreed in December to work on the idea in a more limited form than suggested by Mr Macron, who wanted a fund worth several percentage points of eurozone gross domestic product.

By many measures Greece has turned a corner: Its stock benchmark has jumped 26 percent in 2019, set for its best first half in two decades, and trumping European shares’ 8.1 percent gain, Bloomberg News reported. Last year, the country recorded the strongest economic growth since 2007. Greece’s 10-year bonds yield 3.3 percent, a fraction of the 37 percent the country had to pay at the height of the financial crisis. For all that, many Greeks are still struggling to claw out from under mountains of debt after a decade during which the economy cratered, contracting by more than a quarter.

A businessman and his mother have been restricted for five years from acting as directors of any company, unless it meets certain requirements, after the High Court found they failed to keep proper books and records for their liquidated hairdressing supplies and beauty treatments business, The Irish Times reported. Warren Logan was executive director of Hairspray Wholesalers Ltd, Fashion City, Ballymount, Dublin, while his mother Dolores MacKenzie was a non-executive director. The company was voluntarily wound up on May 1st, 2013 and a liquidator, Jim Luby, was appointed.

Credit Suisse Group AG’s recent shareholder meeting took an awkward turn when a Mozambican activist questioned Chairman Urs Rohner over the bank’s role in fraudulent deals that saddled her country with $2 billion of debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. The confrontation halfway through Friday’s meeting was the latest example of the rising international pressure on Credit Suisse to forgive loans it made to Mozambican state-owned companies engaged in an alleged complex fraud, and potentially, to pay damages to victims.

The financial crisis has caused a “split in society” in some European countries due to the “deep scars” of a lost economic decade that are still affecting workers’ chances, new research has warned, the Financial Times reported. Although aggregate growth across the continent is rebounding after a weak end to last year, economic activity and employment in some areas are yet to surpass the levels achieved more than a decade ago, the report by economists at Dutch bank ING found.

UK manufacturing growth slowed in April as companies eased their stockpiling following the delay of Brexit and new export orders declined, according to a survey of executives, the Financial Times reported. The IHS Markit manufacturing purchasing managers’ index dropped to 53.1 in April, from 55.1 in the previous month, in line with the expectations of economists polled by Reuters. The survey covers last month, when the UK’s exit from the EU was delayed to the end of October after MPs repeatedly voted down Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal with the EU.

Some of Metro Bank’s largest customers left the bank after the discovery of a historic accounting error in the first quarter, damaging growth at the under-fire British lender, the Financial Times reported. Chief executive Craig Donaldson said “adverse sentiment” had led to the departure of a “small number of large commercial and partnership customers”, contributing to a 4 per cent quarter-on-quarter reduction in deposits. Metro Bank in January revealed that it had miscategorised a large number of commercial loans, meaning it did not have as much capital against them as it should.

Philip Green is racing to secure the future of his retail group Arcadia, promising to invest £100m in the company as it seeks creditor support for what promises to be one of the most complex restructurings on the UK high street, the Financial Times reported. The owner of chains including Topshop and Dorothy Perkins is locked in tense negotiations with landlords and the pensions regulator over plans to cut rents and close a swath of stores in the face of sinking sales in its UK shops and persistent discounting by high-street rivals.

Debenhams is demanding reductions in business rates alongside cuts to rents as part of its attempt to reduce its store occupancy costs, according to documents seen by the Financial Times. Last week, the struggling department store group confirmed it would launch a company voluntary arrangement — a type of insolvency proceeding — to restructure its expensive and inflexible leases, the Financial Times reported. That followed a financial restructuring through which the group’s creditors took control of its business and assets.

Britain’s second biggest care home operator Four Seasons has appointed administrators to push through a sale in a last-ditch attempt to save the business that houses 17,000 residents, the Financial Times reported. The administration of two holding companies — which were set up by the care home chain’s former private equity owner, Terra Firma — will enable the US hedge fund that seized control to sell the business without any ongoing obligations.