There is light at the end of the tunnel at last, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Workers in the eurozone are finally seeing the signs of a five-year-old recovery in their own pockets, with wage growth picking up to 2 per cent year on year, the fastest pace since an aborted spurt in 2012. The obvious reaction to this development should be to welcome it — and immediately add “not before time”. Wage growth has been miserable for a decade, not just in the eurozone, but across the rich world.

An insolvency fund has been set up by the Malta Tourism Authority to provide security to customers in the event of a licensed travel agent becoming insolvent, Times of Malta reported. Customers who would have booked travel packages that were not availed of because of insolvency, would get a refund of the payments made if they would have bought their packages from an agent subscribed to the fund.

The German government says its 2019 budget will comply with eurozone debt limits for the first time in 17 years, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. The draft budget also raises defense spending — a contentious issue between Germany and U.S. President Donald Trump. Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told a news conference that debt would fall to 58.25 percent of yearly economic output. That would put it below the 60 percent limit established by rules to ensure fiscal responsibility and price stability in the 19 countries that use the euro.

The decision on who will succeed Mario Draghi as European Central Bank president is still a year away, but the jockeying for position is already under way. The 19 countries that use the euro are preparing for a delicate political dance that will decide who will steer the eurozone economy away from years of easy-money policies, The Wall Street Journal reported. The favorite, Jens Weidmann, the conservative president of Germany’s central bank, risks becoming a lightning rod for criticism of the nation’s dominance of the $14 trillion currency bloc.

The property boom in Germany’s capital is breaking record after record, but the city’s elders are looking to pump the brakes, The Wall Street Journal reported. Berlin’s left-leaning local government, an alliance of Social Democrats, Greens and Socialists, is moving to rein in the residential real-estate market with a barrage of measures that critics say would have put East Germany’s Communist former rulers to shame.

In times of summer, the thoughts of young (and oldish) financiers often turn to liquidity; and not just because they are dreaming about sangria or beer on a sunny beach. Instead the big issue in summer is that the ability to buy and sell assets — or the level of “liquidity” — typically declines during the holiday lull. That can cause asset prices to go haywire if a nasty surprise hits, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Just think of what happened in August 2007 or August 1997.

The Central Bank has directed lenders in the Republic to hold additional capital from next year in order to protect them from a sudden downturn, the Irish Times reported. The regulator said that banks must hold the equivalent of 1 per cent of risk-weighted assets as a so-called countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB) from July 2019, though it noted that the sector currently has enough surplus capital to absorb the increase. The buffer applies not only to domestic banks, but the Irish loan portfolios of European-regulated institutions.

The Insolvency Service of Ireland (ISI) conducted more than 300 investigations last year into cases where it suspected people going through bankruptcy had not declared assets or had illegally transferred property to the detriment of creditors, according to its latest annual report, the Irish Times reported. The report, due to be presented imminently to the Cabinet, discloses that three of these investigations resulted in the recovery of about €6.5 million. Last year saw 521 people exit bankruptcy, while 118 family homes were transferred back into the ownership of former bankrupts.

Fresh Italian debt sales in coming weeks will test investors’ view of the interest rates available on the country’s substantial financing needs, as market participants warn that conditions are still far from settled, the Financial Times reported. Italian government bond yields remain elevated after a price plunge in May drove the 10-year benchmark briefly above 3.3 per cent, as populist parties sought to form a government.

Britain’s biggest labour union said on Tuesday it launched legal action against Carillion on behalf of former workers of the company, whose jobs were made redundant following the collapse of the British outsourcer in January, Reuters reported. The members were employed by Carillion’s group company Planned Maintenance Engineering Ltd on a contract at Britain’s GCHQ spy agency headquarters in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.