The head of the European Central Bank is urging political leaders to repair gaps in the way the euro is set up to prevent another crisis — including by finding money to help governments hit by deep recessions. Mario Draghi said Friday in a speech in Florence, Italy, that sharing some government funds could provide "an extra layer of stabilization" for countries facing economic and market turmoil that can't be calmed through national budget and economic policies, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story.

UniCredit SpA Chief Executive Officer Jean Pierre Mustier is ramping up cost cuts and improving asset quality to keep his promise of building a leading pan-European bank, Bloomberg News reported. A 5.2 percent decline in operating expense in the first quarter helped the bank increase net income to 1.11 billion euros ($1.3 billion) from 907 million euros a year earlier. That beat the 796 million-euro profit expected by the average of 8 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Shares in Ulster Bank parent Royal Bank of Scotland rose as much as 6 per cent on Thursday after the bank reached a $4.9 billion settlement with US authorities, opening the way for its privatisation and return of cash to taxpayers who bailed it out in the financial crisis, the Irish Times reported. The fine, much lower than expected, resolves a US Department of Justice investigation into the British bank’s sale of mispriced mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the crisis and clears one of its most debilitating hangovers from that era.

Michael Fingleton, the former managing director of Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS), sought to establish at a Central Bank inquiry on Thursday that certain communications from the regulator made “recommendations” rather than statutory orders in the run-up to the financial crisis, the Irish Times reported. Mr Fingleton, who is representing himself at the inquiry, noted that some letters from the regulator to the now-defunct building society about its handling of credit reviews in 2006 and 2007 contained no legal provision.

Ulster Bank has pressed the button on the sale of €1.6 billion of mortgages that are deep in arrears, bringing to more than €12 billion the amount of Irish loans on the market as lenders face mounting regulatory pressure to cut their bad debt levels, the Irish Times reported. The news came as senior central bankers and Oireachtas finance committee members locked horns on Thursday over the approach that overseas buyers of non-performing loans are taking to mortgage holders in default.

A gauge of U.K. house prices dipped to its lowest since in more than five years last month, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, with the slowdown most acute in London and the southeast, Bloomberg News reported. RICS’s gauge of prices dropped to minus 8, the lowest since November 2012, the organization said in a report Thursday. The descent into negative territory follows months of stagnating prices, and surveyors don’t expect any pick-up in the near term. The report is the latest to show strain in the U.K.

Goldman Sachs, which was hired in 2007 to manage an abortive attempt to sell Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS) before the financial crash, told regulators at the time it had concerns over the availability of information from the lender, an inquiry into INBS heard on Wednesday, the Irish Times reported. INBS picked the Wall Street investment bank in September 2007 to run a long-awaited sale of the building society, including the compilation of detailed financial data for prospective buyers.

Gayle Dunne, wife of bankrupt developer Seán Dunne, is asking the High Court to halt proceedings brought against her here over the transfer of South African properties between the couple, the Irish Times reported. The case relates to Mr Dunne’s 2013 bankruptcy adjudications in both Ireland and the United States, Chris Lehane, the official in charge of Mr Dunne’s Irish bankruptcy, has brought proceedings over the alleged fraudulent transfer of assets in South Africa and Ireland between Mr and Ms Dunne.

French factory production fell sharply in the first three months of the year, adding further weight to the mounting evidence of a slowdown in eurozone growth in the first quarter, the Financial Times reported. The quarter-on-quarter fall was led by a quarterly drop in the manufacturing of transport equipment, including car production, and a drop in oil refining. Manufacturing output dropped 1.8 per cent from the previous quarter, while overall industrial output fell 1.3 per cent, the French national statistics agency Insee said.

Italian assets are being hit by a brisk sell-off, with the growing prospect of a second general election within months leaving Milan stocks looking distinctly out of fashion with investors and the country’s bond yields rising, the Financial Times reported. Italy’s main stocks benchmark, the FTSE Mib, is down 2.2 per cent, a significantly sharper fall than the 0.2 per cent slip on the Europe-wide Stoxx 600. Financial stocks are taking the biggest toll on the Milan index. UniCredit is down by more than 3 per cent, with Intesa Sanpaolo weaker by almost 2 per cent.