House prices across the eurozone are rising at their fastest since before the global financial crisis, forcing the region’s banks to squeeze the supply of credit to would-be mortgage holders, the Financial Times reported. Eurostat reported on Tuesday that house prices in the 19-member currency area rose 4.5 per cent in the year to the first quarter of 2018 — a level last seen in early 2007. Five countries — Latvia, Slovenia, Ireland, Portugal and Slovakia — saw double-digit price rises.

Dismal news for French manufacturers in May, who saw industrial production fall by 0.2 per cent compared to April as the sector registered a quarter-on-quarter decline, the Financial Times reported. The decline was below the 0.7 per cent rise expected by economists in a Reuters poll, and followed a 0.5 per cent fall in April, according to data from Insee. Over the quarter, manufacturing output in one of the eurozone’s biggest economies fell by 0.5 per cent, while overall industrial production fell by 0.8 per cent.

When a beloved regional beer ramps up production, there’s always a question of whether it can gain new fans without losing what made it special. Something similar is happening with a German debt instrument known as Schuldschein, a hitherto hidden corner of the market where borrowing has tripled in recent years, Bloomberg News reported. Not quite a loan and not quite a bond, the traditional Schuldschein was hammered out by local lenders for solid local manufacturers. Now companies like Volkswagen AG, ArcelorMittal and U.S. paintmaker Sherwin-Williams Co.

People who work in high finance tend to develop the belief that they know a lot about business, that in fact they are better at business than regular businesspeople, a Bloomberg View reported. This is an understandable belief. The financial industry is a sort of meta-business. Successfully investing in or lending to companies requires you to understand their underlying business, and the deeper your understanding the more confident you will probably be in your investment.

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.

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.

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).

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.

German exports declined in May from the same month last year, according to data released on Monday that highlight the lingering effect of last year’s rise in the euro, the Financial Times reported. Exports from the eurozone’s biggest economy fell 1.3 per cent in May on a year on year basis, according to data from the Federal Statistics Office. Imports, meanwhile, were up 0.8 per cent on the same basis. The trade surplus clocked in at €19.7bn, down from the €21.8bn recorded in the same month in 2017.