The euro has leapt to its strongest point of the day after European Central Bank president Mario Draghi signalled growing confidence in the eurozone recovery and rising inflation, the Financial Times reported. “The threat of deflation is gone and reflationary forces are at play,” he said in a speech in Sintra. The bullish assessment will fuel speculation that monetary policymakers could soon begin discussing a withdrawal of monetary stimulus. The ECB president said all the evidence suggested the central bank was managing to raise demand.

The Bank of England published its twice-yearly assessment of UK financial stability on Tuesday. It judges that the UK financial system is more resilient than it was but is concerned that consumer credit is growing too fast and has ordered banks to put more money aside in case the market turns, the Financial Times reported. The bank’s Financial Policy Committee has warned that there are still “pockets of risk that warrant vigilance” in the UK financial system but reduced its overall warning level from “elevated” to “standard”.

A bankruptcy trustee has started an international tender to sell the assets of Slovakia Steel Mills mini-mill in eastern Slovakia, the trustee firm SSR said. The mill with annual capacity of 620,000 tonnes of steel billets and a rolling mill operation was opened in 2011 in the eastern town of Strazske, but fell into bankruptcy in 2015, and the operations have been mothballed, Reuters reported. "Subject of the sale of the properties represents mainly the key equipment, buildings, other operating assets supporting the production process," a sale notice on the trustee's website said.

Germany sounded the alarm over Italy’s latest bank bailout, saying the apparent bending of European Union rules casts doubt on efforts to further integrate the euro zone, Bloomberg News reported. The government in Rome announced the country’s biggest bank rescue to date on Sunday evening as it committed as much as 17 billion euros ($19 billion) to clean up two failed banks. While the European Commission approved the plan, German officials pointed to the involvement of state aid to shield senior creditors from losses as working around EU law established to deal with bank failures.

Tati, the iconic cut-price shop whose historic store stands near Paris's Sacre Coeur monument, is to be sold to domestic rival Gifi, said a lawyer involved in Tati's restructuring process, Reuters reported. Thomas Hollande, the son of former French President Francois Hollande who was acting as a lawyer for Tati's employees, said the deal would save the bulk of jobs at Tati and keep the brand alive. "This offer will let around 85 percent of staff stay on, which is more than most could have hoped for," Hollande told reporters. The full financial terms of the takeover were not disclosed.

The head of Italy's BIM said on Monday he was confident the private banking group would be sold on the market quickly following the decision to liquidate its main shareholder Veneto Banca, Reuters reported. "We had started work to create a bank that was independent and able to become a high-end private banking pole. We will now restart that project...," CEO Giorgio Girelli told Reuters. On Sunday the Italian government approved a decree to wind down regional lenders Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza which collapsed after years of mismanagement and poor lending.

Italy will take the next step to wind down two failed banks in the northern Veneto region when the government meets to adopt a plan that may smooth the sale of the stricken lenders’ assets to another firm, Bloomberg News reported. The Finance Ministry said late on Friday that all measures would be taken to ensure that senior creditors and depositors of Banca Popolare di Vicenza SpA and Veneto Banca SpA would be protected in a wind-down under the national insolvency law, and customers would see no interruption in service.

A complex credit product that regulators are still trying to get their heads around is proving popular with some big institutional investors in Europe, Bloomberg News reported. The product is a synthetic securitization, in which a bank pays an investor to take on the credit risk of a portfolio while keeping the actual loans on its balance sheet. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has warned such deals can hide a bank’s true risk, while Sweden’s regulator has said it’s planning new rules to keep up with the innovation behind the product.

Poland is slashing back plans to tap the bond market after a crackdown on tax avoidance raised more cash than expected, the Financial Times reported. The eastern European nation is running a budget deficit just a tenth of the size it forecast for this year, thanks to a pick-up in economic growth, as well as higher revenue from the tax reforms.

The delayed $13bn takeover of India’s Essar Oil by a consortium led Rosneft has cleared its last serious obstacles, according to the Russian oil group’s chief executive Igor Sechin. Shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting in Sochi were told on Thursday by Mr Sechin that a “legal decision was received” that would allow the deal to proceed, the Financial Times reported.