Credit Suisse AG is closing in on an agreement to settle a $1.2 billion derivatives demand against bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., reducing the claim to $385 million, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The settlement would end a 10-year fight over costs the Swiss lender said it incurred to replace tens of thousands of derivatives trades it had entered with Lehman before its collapse in 2008, Bloomberg News reported. Lehman had accused Credit Suisse of inflating its claim by over $1 billion.

Thousands of customers of failed British brokerage Beaufort are likely to get all their money back, regulators said on Tuesday. Beaufort, which specialized in helping raise money forsmall speculative mining companies, was declared insolvent in March after the U.S. Department of Justice alleged it had a role in a more than $50 million stock fraud and a laundering scheme involving a work by Pablo Picasso, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Weaker growth in the eurozone would “significantly affect Portugal”, the International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday, saying “lingering domestic vulnerabilities” would amplify any external shock to the former bailout country’s economic recovery, the Financial Times reported. The caution came as fallout from the Italian political crisis pushed Portugal’s 10-year debt yield up 12 basis points on Tuesday. Lisbon’s PSI 20 stock market index fell 2.4 per cent. Within this, shares in Millennium BCP, the country’s largest listed bank, shed more than 7 per cent.

Spanish stocks followed Italian equities sharply lower on Tuesday, knocked by uncertainty over the future of the minority government of Mariano Rajoy and extending declines for a fifth straight day, the Financial Times reported. The Ibex 35 index of leading Spanish shares fell by 2.5 per cent, following a decline of 0.6 per cent on Monday and 1.7 per cent on Friday. The Madrid bourse has lost almost 4.5 per cent over the course of May, and is down more than 5 per cent since the start of the year.

The European market for non-performing loans is becoming more active, with Italy and Spain accounting for most of the deals, according to research by the European Central Bank, the Financial Times reported. The total gross book value of NPL portfolios traded in the eurozone hit €66bn in the fourth quarter of 2017, its highest since the data series began in 2015, ECB’s semi-annual financial stability review found. The bulk of that figure came from Italy and Spain where just a handful of chunky portfolios accounted for the majority of the total.

Asia-Pacific equities were mostly lower in early trading on Tuesday as the political crisis in Italy worsened, investors favoured government bonds and the yen strengthened, the Financial Times reported. Among the region’s major benchmarks, the Topix index in Tokyo and the Kospi in Seoul each fell 0.6 per cent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 0.5 per cent.

This year has been described as the “year of the CVA”. Barely six months in, it has become the year of the CVA backlash, the Financial Times reported. Company Voluntary Arrangements are agreements with creditors that aim to keep struggling businesses afloat. Recent high-profile cases have allowed retailers such as New Look, Carpetright and Mothercare to impose rent reductions on landlords and to break leases to close some stores altogether, in order to avoid insolvency. But landlords and rival retailers are unhappy with what some are coming to view as an abuse of legal process.

Czech financial firm J&T said on Friday it had struck a deal with Chinese state conglomerate CITIC Group to settle debts owed by troubled Chinese company CEFC, ending a dispute, Reuters reported. Privately-held CEFC has spearheaded a Chinese acquisition drive in the Czech Republic, championed by Czech President Milos Zeman, which includes a range of assets including engineering, brewing and real estate as well as a soccer club and an airline.

European Union finance ministers reached an agreement on Friday on reforming bank capital rules, a major step towards boosting the bloc’s financial stability and a stepping stone towards a deal on a backstop for its bank-rescue fund in June, Reuters reported. European Union finance ministers reached an agreement on Friday on reforming bank capital rules, a major step towards boosting the bloc’s financial stability and a stepping stone towards a deal on a backstop for its bank-rescue fund in June.

Banca Popolare di Bari ScpA, an Italian regional lender weakened by bad loans, plans to raise as much as 350 million euros ($410 million) from investors this year to strengthen capital and complete the bank’s cleanup, people with knowledge of the matter said. The lender will seek at least 250 million euros of fresh funds, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private, Bloomberg News reported. The bank hasn’t decided on the method of the capital increase and may consider listing the company, two of the people said. A spokesman for the bank declined to comment. Pop.