French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel say they want to make the common currency area more resilient and adaptable, but their two countries have traditionally disagreed over how that should be achieved, Bloomberg News reported. Can crack economists from the relevant countries solve the problem for them? They are giving it a shot -- but building a European consensus will be hard. A month ago, a group of 14 French and German economists co-authored a detailed proposal to bridge the policy differences between the two countries.

ArcelorMittal and Russia’s state-controlled VTB Group have hit a fresh snag in their pursuit of Essar Steel India Ltd., an insolvent producer that could fetch at least $6 billion, Bloomberg News reported. Advisers evaluating the offers for Essar Steel are recommending that all the bids be disqualified, according to people with knowledge of the matter. A committee of Essar Steel lenders will meet later this week to discuss the eligibility of the proposals, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.

HSBC has warned that it could pay at least $1.5bn in penalties over alleged tax evasion and money laundering at its Swiss private bank, casting a shadow over Stuart Gulliver’s final day as chief executive, the Financial Times reported. The estimate underlines how the outgoing HSBC boss has struggled to get to grips with the string of scandals thrown up by a number of ill-judged acquisitions dating back to before he took over in 2011. Mr Gulliver was due to hand control of the bank at midnight on Tuesday UK time to John Flint, HSBC’s former global head of retail banking.

Britain’s pensions regulator twice ignored requests from trustees of collapsed outsourcing firm Carillion to force the company to plug its pension deficit, lawmakers said on Tuesday. The Pensions Regulator has come under fire for taking insufficient steps to protect pension scheme members of troubled companies, following the collapse of department store chain BHS in 2016, Reuters reported. Carillion collapsed on Jan. 15, with only 29 million pounds ($41 million) of cash left.

Greece’s finance minister has said his country will not need to be subject to tight monitoring once its bailout programme ends in August, insisting the concerns of EU partners are misplaced as it can be trusted to manage its finances safely, the Financial Times reported. Euclid Tsakalotos says that Greece’s new economic growth plan, to be unveiled in April, will assuage fears in Brussels and Washington that the leftwing Syriza government will roll back unpopular economic reforms as soon as bailout constraints are lifted.

"Every promise is debt - think about it," screams the message below a huge, ticking "debt clock" that greets passengers at the main train stations in Rome and Milan. The digital clocks, installed by a think tank, update Italy's 2.3 trillion-euro debt in real time, urging voters to fear election promises that analysts say could send the debt spiraling out of control after next month's vote, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Greece won't backtrack on its privatisation plan after its bailout ends and expects state companies to submit plans by April to make themselves more competitive, the head of its state assets fund said. Greece, whose bailout ends in August, has agreed with lenders to raise another 3 billion euros (2.63 billion pounds) by 2019 from state asset sales and has promised to launch stake sales in Athens International Airport (AIA), gas company DEPA and oil refiner Hellenic Petroleum by next month, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Permanent TSB has put as much as €4 billion of non-performing mortgages up for sale under its so-called Project Glas portfolio, triple the amount previously envisaged by management at one time, it has emerged, the Irish Times reported. The size of the planned transaction is equivalent to almost a fifth of its current total loan book.

Overseas private-equity and hedge funds are currently circling as much as €11 billion of Irish loans, mainly mortgages, that have been put in the market by three of the most active lenders during the property bubble. Permanent TSB said on Tuesday that it had pressed the start button on the sale of a portfolio of loans known as Project Glas as it seeks to lower its level of non-performing loans (NPLs), the Irish Times reported. It is understood that the portfolio, being marketed by EY, contains up to €2 billion of private and buy-to-let mortgages, based on their original value.

Investors who bought Greece’s latest bond last week are already nursing paper losses, the Financial Times reported. The seven-year bond priced at a yield of 3.5 per cent on Thursday, but the €3bn paper is now trading at 4.19 per cent. Yields rise when prices fall. The timing of the deal was hit by market turbulence last week, with Greece naming bookrunners on the Monday but, after markets shifted on Tuesday, it waited until Thursday to price. The yield on Greece’s 10-year debt has also risen, up 80 basis points in the past week to 4.47 per cent.