While investors find courage in positive data out of Europe, there’s one development that should give them pause. A growing number of small businesses in Europe complain they face excessive delays in being paid for their work, with large parts of the sector seeking tougher laws to address the problem, Bloomberg News reported.

Monte dei Paschi di Siena said on Monday it was in exclusive talks with a domestic fund and a group of investors over the sale of its bad loan portfolio, which it needs to offload before it can be taken over by the state, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The negotiations mark the latest stage in a long-running process to rescue the world's oldest bank, which includes efforts to enable it to shed its bad loans.

Italy’s troubled mid-sized lenders Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca have “all the public guarantees necessary” to shore up their liquidity, Italy’s finance ministry said in a statement on Thursday. Pier Carlo Padoan, finance minister, made the statement after meeting with the bosses of struggling banks Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca on Thursday morning, the Financial Times reported. Both lenders are at risk of being bailed in under EU rules.

The European Central Bank has ruled out the possibility that Brexit could pose a major threat to the euro area economy, rejecting warnings from the Bank of England that a messy UK withdrawal could leave EU companies without vital services, the Financial Times reported. Vitor Constâncio, the ECB’s vice-president, said on Thursday that Brexit could “really not harm significantly the ongoing recovery in the euro area” and that financial firms were already adapting by relocating activities to Europe.

Marks and Spencer’s pre-tax profits fell by 64 per cent in the year to April 1, dragged down by restructuring costs, property impairments and lower clothing sales as the high street fixture turned away from a packed calendar of promotional events, the Financial Times reported. Profits before tax and exceptional items were down 11 per cent, slightly ahead of analyst expectations according to an average compiled by Bloomberg. Britain’s biggest apparel retailer said its market share had “stabilised” and that it now accounted for a higher proportion of full-price sales than a year ago.

Seadrill Ltd. jumped as much as 26 percent as the offshore driller controlled by John Fredriksen said it’s getting closer to a solution to restructure the industry’s heaviest debt load and that it’s promoting a company insider to chief executive officer, Bloomberg News reported. Seadrill has been working for well over a year to restructure a wall of debt incurred before crude prices started collapsing in 2014, abruptly closing a decade-long boom for the oil-service industry.

In the eurozone, sometimes everything old is new again. Witness how an idea for creating safe eurozone bonds devised in the heat of the sovereign crisis six years ago is reappearing as a solution to a very different problem, The Wall Street Journal reported in a commentary. That’s right: ESBies are making a comeback. In 2011, a team of economists proposed the idea of European Safe Bonds as a replacement for German Bunds and safe-haven investment in the eurozone. The concept is similar to an asset-backed security.

Irish airline Ryanair is ready to deploy up to 30 planes in Italy to replace capacity lost if Alitalia collapses or is restructured but does not want to buy the struggling Italian carrier, Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said on Tuesday. Ryanair's view mirrors the stance of rival easyJet and British Airways owner International Airlines Group(IAG), which have both said they are interested in replacing Alitalia capacity but say they do not want to buy the airline.

Eurozone finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund are exploring a compromise plan for Greece’s bailout that would provide much-needed funds this summer while delaying sensitive talks on debt relief, the Financial Times reported. Diplomats said the proposal, put forward by the IMF, would involve the fund taking a formal decision to join Greece’s bailout with the proviso it would not provide any money until the euro area gives further details on how it is prepared to ease Athens’ debts.

Portugal’s recovery from the eurozone’s debt crisis reached a milestone on Monday as the EU said the country, which needed an international bailout, was no longer in breach of the bloc’s budget rules, the Financial Times reported. Brussels’ verdict underlines Portugal’s turnround after its rescue by eurozone governments and the International Monetary Fund in 2011 and reflects the improving economic environment for the single currency area, where growth has picked up and unemployment is at an eight-year low.