A failed bidder for Portugal's third-largest lender Novo Banco has asked its lawyers to block the 1 billion euro (836.70 billion pounds) sale to U.S. fund Lone Star and told the central bank it should relaunch the bidding. London-based financial firm Aethel Partners complained to the Bank of Portugal this week in a document viewed by Reuters. It said the central bank had not properly considered its 3.8 billion euro bid when it awarded Novo Banco to Lone Star last month.

Greece achieved a 2016 primary surplus almost seven times higher than its bailout target, but the International Monetary Fund is skeptical the country can sustain that performance, Bloomberg News reported. The Hellenic Statistical Authority is set on Friday to unveil data on last year’s primary surplus, which Eurostat is expected to validate on Monday. The surplus will be close to 4 percent of gross domestic product, according to a finance ministry official who asked not to be identified in line with policy. The bailout target was for a primary surplus of 0.5 percent of GDP.

Alitalia employees are voting on whether to accept a government-brokered deal to save Italy's flagship airline from bankruptcy, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. Some 12,500 Alitalia workers began voting Thursday on a package that eased steep cuts sought by parent Etihad Airways, and which will open 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion) in investment to keep the airline afloat. Voting runs through Tuesday.

In Italy, the banks, according to the European Central Bank, are saddled with $385 billion of non-performing loans, which is one-third of the euro zone’s total. Three banks in Italy, including Monte dei Paschi, the world’s oldest bank, are struggling to survive, and the government is in a battle royal with the EU and the ECB concerning their restructuring, a Bloomberg View reported. Italy has set up several bad bank funds, but they are woefully inadequate to confront the real losses that have taken place.

The German government believes an interest rate increase by the European Central Bank (ECB) would help to reduce Germany's often-criticised export surplus, the Funke Mediengruppe newspaper chain reported Wednesday. The newspaper cited an eight-page paper prepared by the German finance and economics ministries which Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble plans to present at the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund later this week, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Schaeuble is a longtime critic of the ECB's current ultra-low interest rate policy.

Those sceptical of Europe’s single currency can always find something to worry about: the biggest concern now is the imminent French presidential election. But aside from politics, which can make anything happen, notice that economic claims that the euro is doomed to fail have quietly vanished from the scene, the Financial Times reported. Even Paul Krugman now allows that the euro has not stopped France from employing more of its people in prime working age than the US, or use its labour about as productively.

Every few decades or so, the world of central banking turns upside down. Over the last 100 years we had systems in which central banks targeted a fixed conversion rate to gold, the supply of money in circulation or, more recently, a rate of expected future inflation. A combination of deep changes in the money markets and financial crises is now conspiring towards another big change, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. This debate is still confined to a small number of experts in central banks, and academics.

UK turkey producer Bernard Matthews was pushed into insolvency by private equity firm Rutland Partners to “line [its] own pockets”, according to the chairman of a parliamentary committee. Bernard Matthews was put into a “pre-pack” administration last year, allowing it to continue trading but offload its liabilities, including its pension scheme, before its assets were sold to Ranjit Boparan for £87.5m, the Financial Times reported. Rutland earned a £14m return on its investment in the faltering company.

Greece and its creditors say they’ve made progress in their endless negotiations over the country’s debts -- enough to avoid a default on payments worth more than 7 billion euros in July, a Bloomberg View reported. That’s good, but it was the easy part. The definitive settlement that Greece and the European Union both need still isn’t in sight. For the past seven years, the International Monetary Fund and euro-zone institutions have supported Athens with loans in exchange for fiscal austerity and structural economic reform.

European banks may have to plug a capital shortfall of 120 billion euros ($128 billion) if new regulations drawn up by regulators including the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision come into force as they stand, according to McKinsey & Co. The committee is putting the final touches to the Basel III post-crisis capital rules, setting stricter standards for how lenders estimate the riskiness of their assets, Bloomberg News reported. The global banking industry has dubbed this Basel IV, arguing that it constitutes a new, separate round of regulation.