Russia’s largest oil company disclosed another advance payment to Venezuela’s state producer after the U.S. sanctioned President Nicolas Maduro on Monday, Bloomberg News reported. Rosneft PJSC paid $1.02 billion to Petroleos de Venezuela SA in April for future crude supplies, the state-run Russian producer said in an earnings statement on Friday. That follows advance payments of about $1.5 billion in 2016 and comes a day after Rosneft Chief Executive Officer Igor Sechin pledged to stick with investment plans in the crisis-torn Latin American nation.

Global investors are preoccupied by speculation about the European Central Bank’s tapering plans, but another strand in its more than two-year experiment with bond buying is starting to garner attention, the Financial Times reported. Under its quantitative easing policy, the ECB in March began reinvesting all the money of the maturing debt from its €4.2tn balancesheet back into the eurozone bond market. This will accelerate in the coming months and years as more of the central bank’s portfolio of bonds mature.

The Swiss franc’s fall is showing no signs of slowing down, the Financial Times reported. The continued rise of the euro on the back of strong economic data and an upbeat tone to global markets is weighing on the franc, traditionally a haven asset in times of market turmoil. At pixel time, the euro is up by 0.7 per cent on the day at SFr1.1472 – a new post-limit low for the franc. The Swiss currency has fallen 4.2 per cent in the last 10 days as greater domestic demand for foreign assets and positive eurozone figures lured investors towards riskier assets.

Regulators might expect that shutting down a bank under suspicion for asset-stripping and fraud is enough to staunch the bleeding. But five months after Tatfondbank PJSC, one of Russia’s biggest regional banks, defaulted on a bond as the regulator seized control, State Street Corp. authorized payment of more than $500,000 in interest and principal to a Kazakh investor that held the debt, the U.S. custodian bank said.

Senior eurozone officials have warned that the continued prosecution in Greece of its former statistics chief is threatening to drive a wedge between Athens and its euro area creditors, only weeks after the country brokered a deal on the next stages of its €86bn bailout, the Financial Times reported. A suspended sentence handed down this week against Andreas Georgiou has prompted consternation among EU policymakers, reviving what many capitals fear is a series of politically motivated trials intended to restore the economic reputation of previous governments.

The prices of goods leaving the eurozone’s factory gates fell in June for the third month in four, as inflation looks set to remain weak despite a sustained pickup in economic growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. The European Union’s statistics agency said Wednesday that producer prices fell 0.1% from May, having also declined in that month and in March. Indeed, the last month-to-month increase in producer prices was recorded in January.

The Italian government is hoping to avoid the break-up of Alitalia by insisting it will give preference to bids for the entire company at the launch of the final stage of its sale out of bankruptcy, the Financial Times reported. On Tuesday, the state-appointed commissioners running the airline since it collapsed into administration in May set out the key conditions for tabling bids in the upcoming public tender. They specify offers for all of Alitalia, or separate bids for the airline operations, which includes maintenance, and for the group’s airport ground handling activities.

The eurozone has grown at its fastest rate since the eruption of the debt crisis five years ago, underscoring a brighter outlook after elections that eased fears of a populist political threat, the Financial Times reported. Quarterly eurozone GDP growth accelerated from 0.5 per cent to 0.6 per cent in the three months to June, compared with the same period in 2016. The performance helped to drive year-on-year expansion from 1.9 per cent to 2.1 per cent — the highest rate since the second quarter of 2011.

Brexit will push up costs for banks by as much as 4 per cent and their capital requirements will rise up to 30 per cent, according to the most detailed assessment yet of what Britain’s departure from the EU means for the sector, the Financial Times reported. The findings by consultants Oliver Wyman will make grim reading for its bank clients, many of which are struggling with low profitability. They come a day after HSBC became the first lender to put a price tag on Brexit, saying the immediate disruption would cost it $200m-$300m.

The European Central Bank has been pumping stimulus into the eurozone economy for over two years. As part of their quantitative easing measures, the bank’s policymakers have promised to “reinvest” the money they make from maturing bonds back into the debt market. Despite talk of “tapering” dominating markets, more and more bond redemptions are due over the coming years, and thus increasing reinvestment is on the cards, the Financial Times reported. Analysis from Nordea shows these “silent” ECB measures will have one principle beneficiary: Germany.