HSBC Holdings Plc’s Steven Major is starting to show a little less conviction on two of his big investment calls of recent years: bullish Treasuries and bearish credit. The shift comes as traders shaken by weeks of turbulence across asset classes regain their footing, Bloomberg News reported. In European credit markets, the biggest high-grade sell-off in more than two years has created a short-term buying opportunity, while Treasuries offer little less value given the Federal Reserve’s policy trajectory, the strategist said in a research note.

Aston Villa have reached an agreement with British tax authorities (HM Revenue & Customs) over a tax bill and are currently not working with administration advisors or insolvency practitioners, the Championship club said on Thursday. The BBC reported that Villa owe 4 million pounds ($5.36 million) and have already paid HMRC 500,000 pounds on Wednesday, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. They will pay another 1.2 million pounds this week.

A top European Central Bank official says bank officials will begin discussions next week on withdrawing their bond-purchase stimulus — suggesting the ECB isn’t overly worried by the recent political upheaval in Italy, the Associated Press reported. Executive board member Peter Praet said in a speech Wednesday that “next week, the governing council will have to assess whether progress so far has been sufficient to warrant an unwinding of our net asset purchases.” Currently the bank says it will keep buying 30 billion euros ($35 billion) in bonds at least through September.

This Sunday Swiss voters will decide whether to try what may be the boldest financial experiment ever contemplated — dismantling their orthodox banking system and building a new one based on so-called sovereign money, or Vollgeld. The proposal is probably far too radical to have much chance of success, a Bloomberg View reported. Yet that’s a pity. The idea of sovereign money isn’t crazy. It has a long and distinguished academic pedigree and, as a practical matter, there’s a lot to recommend it. Switzerland would do the world a favor by giving the plan a try.

The liquidation of collapsed British outsourcer Carillion will cost UK taxpayers at least £148m, according to a report from the government’s auditor, of which an estimated £50m will be paid to auditor PwC for its work in the process, the Financial Times reported. PwC is the “special manager” appointed to the windup process by the Insolvency Service, causing anger among politicians, given its former role also as an adviser to Carillion.

Italian bonds slid as the country’s new government continued to unnerve investors and European Central Bank policy makers flagged the prospect of talks to end its debt-buying program, Bloomberg News reported. The declines were led by two-year bonds, which have swung wildly over the past week. Italy’s new Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte passed a confidence vote in the Senate Tuesday following his maiden speech that stuck to a spending platform outlined by the Five Star Movement-League coalition.

Mario Draghi is on the verge of a watershed moment in the European Central Bank’s efforts to leave behind its crisis-fighting monetary policy, Bloomberg News reported. Chief Economist Peter Praet on Wednesday signaled the bank’s first formal round of talks on when to stop buying bonds is imminent. That would start the process of bringing down the curtain on stimulus efforts that have resulted in almost 2.5 trillion euros ($2.9 trillion) of bond purchases since 2015.

Investors have pulled nearly $11bn out of European equity exchange traded funds in the past three months, with financials bearing the brunt of withdrawals, the Financial Times reported. During May, more than $3.7bn worth of investment left Europe equity ETFs on a net basis, with vehicles that track German, Italian and Spanish stocks seeing significant net outflows in particular. It marks the most money flowing out of European companies’ shares via tracker funds since data-gathering began in 2008, according to Citi, leaving the asset class with negative outflows year to date.

Sitting in a cramped office a few streets away from the headquarters of Greece’s Public Power Corporation, trade unionist Giorgos Adamides admitted that the privatisation of the sprawling state-owned electricity utility could no longer be postponed, the Financial Times reported. “It’s a national crime that the government is selling off power plants and we [the union] fought hard against it but the troika [of Greece’s international creditors] have the upper hand,” said the president of Genop-DEH, the power workers’ union.

Investors who backed a rebranding of Cambridge Analytica are in a stand-off with former chief executive Alexander Nix after he allegedly withdrew more than $8m from the scandal-hit data firm shortly before it collapsed, the Financial Times reported. Several people involved in the dispute told the Financial Times the withdrawal came shortly after Mr Nix learned British media was reporting on allegations about his company’s role in a massive leak of Facebook user data in March. Mr Nix did not respond to multiple requests for comment.