U.K. economic growth remained subdued in the second quarter, as a modest revival in consumer spending offset shrinking industrial production, a sign that a hoped-for shift toward export-led growth remains elusive, The Wall Street Journal reported. Economists say that businesses—particularly exporters—will need to take the baton from consumers squeezed by rising prices if the U.K. economy is to avoid stuttering just as Britain’s exit talks with the European Union get under way.

Germany’s biggest banks have found an unlikely ally in their battle to shake up their sector’s chronic low profitability — the low interest rates that most eurozone banks will lament when they report second-quarter earnings over the coming days. Their long struggle to compete with the higher deposit rates and lower cost services offered by Germany’s army of public sector banks has left the country’s top five banks with low margins and a collective market share of just 30 per cent, the Financial Times reported.

Permanent TSB shares plunged as much as 16 per cent on Wednesday as investors worried about the bank’s plan to resort to loan sales and repossessions to resolve its worst €2.68 billion of mortgages, which will also delay a return to dividends. The 75 per cent State-owned lender reported that its net profit shrank 55 per cent to €36 million in the first half from the year-earlier period, as it took a €6 million charge against bad loans, the Irish Times reported.

Greece is back as the litmus test of investor faith in the future of the eurozone. But this time, the news is positive, the Financial Times reported. Having been shut out of markets for the past three years, Greece has dipped its toe back into the debt waters on Tuesday with a five-year bond and investors dived in. The yield, or return on the bond, came in at 4.625 per cent — Greece paid 4.95 per cent the last time it issued a bond under the centre-right government of Antonis Samaras in 2014 (yields fall when a bond’s price rises).

The battle to control euro clearing once the U.K. leaves the European Union is getting uglier, Bloomberg News reported. LCH, the London Stock Exchange Group Plc unit that dominates euro clearing, wants to stop the European Central Bank from gaining the power to veto its decisions. Eurex Clearing, the Deutsche Boerse AG-owned subsidiary that would probably benefit most if London was stripped of euro clearing, says that clearinghouses should involve the ECB.

A fresh slide for Provident Financial in the wake of last month’s profit warning bucked the trend as the London market recovered from an underwhelming start to the week, the Financial Times reported. Provident was the biggest decliner on the FTSE 100 as a 23 per cent drop in adjusted first-half profits rekindled fears that triggered a 17 per cent fall in shares at the end of June — when the doorstep lender revealed the extent of a botched restructuring of its loan-collection procedures.

The European Central Bank should maintain a "firmly accommodative" monetary policy for an "extended period", the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday, as it forecast inflation remaining below target. As the ECB prepares for a decision in autumn on whether to claw back its stimulus program, the IMF said calls for an exit from easy-money policy were "premature" because consumer prices were not increasing enough, Reuters reported.

Novo Banco SA, the Portuguese lender created from the collapse of Banco Espírito Santo SA three years ago, has launched a plan to raise €500 million ($582 million) from a bond exchange—a condition of its takeover by U.S. private-equity firm Lone Star Funds, The Wall Street Journal reported. Pacific Investment Management Co. and other Novo Banco bondholders who wanted to mount their own takeover have challenged the Lone Star arrangement. A successful bond exchange would put the bank a big step closer to securing the Lone Star deal.

In our excitement over what is new, we often miss what is important. The election of Emmanuel Macron has triggered expectations of a Franco-German entente on further fiscal integration in the euro zone. Brexit has given new momentum to proposals for a multi-speed Europe. But behind these speculative possibilities real, profound change is proceeding relatively unnoticed except by technical experts, the Irish Times reported.

It is precisely five years since Mario Draghi declared the European Central Bank ready “to do whatever it takes” to preserve the euro. With the eurozone’s recovery in full swing and the ECB starting to edge towards an exit from stimulus, there could be few better ways to mark the anniversary than a successful sovereign bond issue by Greece — the biggest casualty of the single currency area’s debt crisis, the Financial Times reported.