Greece’s beleaguered banking system has taken a fresh hit from the country’s shaky bailout talks this year, registering its worst deposit outflows since the height of its debt crisis in the summer of 2015, the Financial Times reported. Latest figures from the European Central Bank showed households and businesses pulled €1.1bn from the country’s lenders last month, moderating from the €1.7bn withdrawn at the start of the year but marking the worst two-monthly outflow since the country was bought to the brink of a eurozone exit nearly two years ago.

Croatia's government is drawing up a law to protect the economy if a major company runs into trouble, Deputy Prime Minister Martina Dalic said on Friday. She said the law could be used for debt-laden food business Agrokor, a major employer whose creditors include Russia's Sberbank. She denied the legislation was being drawn up because of Agrokor's problems, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

One of the arguments employed by EU politicians to oblige UK-based financial companies to shift activity across the Channel after Brexit is that a necessary price of access is “onshore” regulation, the Financial Times reported. It is mainly a question of “who’s queen?”, namely which authority has the legal right to supervise the contents of the City’s vast financial punchbowl. Brussels might have swallowed the UK’s jurisdiction over the part that’s sourced in Europe when Britain was inside the trading bloc, runs the logic. Put the country outside it and the dispensation can’t remain.

Businesses across the 19-country eurozone, and particularly in France, are increasingly upbeat and hiring more people despite big uncertainties — including France's high-stakes presidential election, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. A closely watched survey of some 5,000 companies indicates that business activity is growing overall at the fastest rate in over six years.

A Portuguese bank has borrowed on the international debt market for the first time in more than a year, defying a boycott from BlackRock and Pimco, which are locked in a legal fight with the country’s authorities over losses incurred in 2015, the Financial Times reported. Caixa Geral de Depósitos’ €500m subordinated bond, which priced on Thursday at a coupon of 10.75 per cent, attracted more than €2bn of orders. CGD, which is state-owned, is the second lender this month to tap investor interest in higher-yielding, although riskier, bank bonds from the eurozone’s so-called periphery.

When the EU created a supervisor to police the eurozone’s biggest banks at the end of 2014, it was billed as vital to protect a financial system teetering from the sovereign debt crisis, the Financial Times reported. Two years on, the eurozone might be creeping back to health — but doubt still surrounds whether the new Frankfurt-based body, the Single Supervisory Mechanism, has done enough to tackle persistent failings in parts of the region’s banking sector. “In purely operational terms, they have had a good start,” said Nicolas Véron, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a think-tank.

Banks in London that relocate operations to the euro zone after Brexit are likely to be spared a lengthy entry test by regulators, making it easier for them to shift, according to two officials with knowledge of the matter, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The European Central Bank, the euro zone's banking supervisor, has had many inquiries from British-based banks wanting to come under its watch, prompting it to look at fast-tracking licence applications, according to the sources.

Greece will not last in the eurozone in the long run and officials working on a review of its bailout package should prepare for such a possibility, a senior member of the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives said. Greece has lost a quarter of its national output since it first sought financial aid in 2010, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Its current bailout package is the third in seven years.

A quarter of a century ago, Italy was in a sea of troubles that invites a comparison with today’s storms, the Financial Times reported. The party political system was disintegrating. A gigantic corruption scandal pervaded the highest levels of public life. Rapidly increasing government debt was crushing the economy. Citizens despaired of the state’s ability to uphold law and order.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the eurozone’s finance ministers, has come under attack after refusing to apologise for saying southern European countries had wasted money on “drinks and women” in the run upto the continent’s debt crisis, the Financial Times reported. At a parliamentary hearing in Brussels on Tuesday, the Dutch policy chief – whose Labour party suffered a punishing defeat in national elections last week – was dubbed “insulting” and “vulgar” by MEPs for remarks made in an interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.