A widely watched measure of eurozone capital flows suggests that Italy’s debts to the European Central Bank are set to hit €500bn this summer, reflecting the eurozone’s persistent financial imbalances, the Financial Times reported. The country’s Target 2 balance — the difference between incoming and outgoing cross-border payments — is €480bn in the red and growing rapidly, according to ECB data. Meanwhile, Germany’s Target 2 surplus is on track to reach €1tn.

Under Italian law a bankruptcy buy-out proposal can be filed by the debtor (after 1 year from the opening of the bankruptcy proceedings), any creditor and any third party, JD Supra reported. The proposal must be approved by the majority of (unsecured and impaired secured) creditors (in amount of claims) and the majority of classes, if any (this means that a subject filing a buy-out proposal votes on the proposal whenever it is a creditor of the debtor and is eligible to vote).

Mario Draghi has delivered a bullish assessment of the eurozone’s economic prospects, saying monetary stimulus undertaken by policymakers had been and would continue to be “very effective” in boosting growth and inflation, the Financial Times reported. The European Central Bank chief told lawmakers at the European Parliament on Monday that the measures — which include negative interest rates and a €2.4tn bond-buying programme — would boost growth and inflation by 1.9 percentage points each between 2016 and 2020.

Baby goods retailer Mothercare is seeking to raise £32.5m from existing shareholders and will increase the number of store closures as it struggles to adapt to challenging conditions on the UK’s high streets. The capital raising, which is larger than originally planned, will be at 19p a share, well below Friday’s closing level of 28.6p, and the proceeds will be used to reduce debt, the Financial Times reported. Mothercare’s shares fell 9 per cent in early London trade to 26p.

The collapse of Carillion exposed the risks of using private companies to cut the cost of delivering public services and its failure could be repeated if the government does not learn lessons, lawmakers said on Monday. Carillion, which employed 43,000 people to provide services in defense, education, health and transport, collapsed in January, becoming the largest construction bankruptcy in British history, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. It left creditors and the firm's pensioners facing steep losses and put thousands of jobs at risk.

The German government says its 2019 budget will comply with eurozone debt limits for the first time in 17 years, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. The draft budget also raises defense spending — a contentious issue between Germany and U.S. President Donald Trump. Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told a news conference that debt would fall to 58.25 percent of yearly economic output. That would put it below the 60 percent limit established by rules to ensure fiscal responsibility and price stability in the 19 countries that use the euro.

The decision on who will succeed Mario Draghi as European Central Bank president is still a year away, but the jockeying for position is already under way. The 19 countries that use the euro are preparing for a delicate political dance that will decide who will steer the eurozone economy away from years of easy-money policies, The Wall Street Journal reported. The favorite, Jens Weidmann, the conservative president of Germany’s central bank, risks becoming a lightning rod for criticism of the nation’s dominance of the $14 trillion currency bloc.

There is light at the end of the tunnel at last, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Workers in the eurozone are finally seeing the signs of a five-year-old recovery in their own pockets, with wage growth picking up to 2 per cent year on year, the fastest pace since an aborted spurt in 2012. The obvious reaction to this development should be to welcome it — and immediately add “not before time”. Wage growth has been miserable for a decade, not just in the eurozone, but across the rich world.

An insolvency fund has been set up by the Malta Tourism Authority to provide security to customers in the event of a licensed travel agent becoming insolvent, Times of Malta reported. Customers who would have booked travel packages that were not availed of because of insolvency, would get a refund of the payments made if they would have bought their packages from an agent subscribed to the fund.

The Central Bank has directed lenders in the Republic to hold additional capital from next year in order to protect them from a sudden downturn, the Irish Times reported. The regulator said that banks must hold the equivalent of 1 per cent of risk-weighted assets as a so-called countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB) from July 2019, though it noted that the sector currently has enough surplus capital to absorb the increase. The buffer applies not only to domestic banks, but the Irish loan portfolios of European-regulated institutions.