As the new Italian government of Paolo Gentiloni hammers away at a rescue plan for beleaguered lender Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, it’s suddenly contending with another corporate crisis: the future of Alitalia SpA, Bloomberg News reported. Executives from key investor Ethiad Airways and Alitalia -- which went bankrupt in 2008 after rescue attempts involving the state and private investors failed, and which teetered on the brink of collapse in 2014 -- are set to meet Italian ministers on Monday, the carrier based in Abu Dhabi said in a statement Sunday.

Portugal’s central bank has chosen US private equity firm Lone Star as the leading candidate to buy Novo Banco, the bank which was carved out of collapsed Banco Espirito Santo (BES), the central bank said in a statement, the Irish Times reported. The central bank now plans to hold further talks with Lone Star after selecting it ahead of other prospective purchasers including China’s Minsheng Financial Holding and US funds Apollo and Centerbridge. Portugal had hoped to decide on the sale of Novo Banco by the end of last year ahead of a final August 2017 deadline for the sale.

Efforts by the Revenue Commissioners to ensure compliance with tax law yielded €555 million for the exchequer in 2016, a year that saw 17 criminal convictions for serious tax and duty offences, the Irish Times reported. The Revenue, which collected a record €47.9 billion in total last year, completed 537,183 “compliance interventions” as it sought to tackle tax evasion, its headline figures show. There were 1,672 summary convictions, down 19 per cent on 2015, while the number of criminal convictions for evasion and fraud is also down on the previous year, when there were 27.

Among UK retailers, Next has tended to give some of the most cautious guidance. This year, that looks the right approach. The clothing chain predicts a particularly doom-laden year for the British high street and warned pre-tax profit may fall by as much as 14 percent. That's down to Next's own issues, but also spiraling costs for retailers. Britons' more ready embrace of online than consumers in some other markets adds to the crunch. Unlike various rivals, Next plans to pass Brexit-related manufacturing cost increases on to its customers.

Monte dei Paschi's rescue has hit Europe's new regime for rescuing banks where it hurts, Reuters reported in a Breakingviews. The Italian state will fund three-quarters of MPS's 8.8 billion euro rescue, rather than winding it down. The rub is that it's hard to think of a bank that looks more like a candidate for resolution. European authorities think they can square the circle. MPS is using a clause in Europe's Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) allowing governments to put capital into banks deemed solvent. The clause applies when a bank fails a stress test.

No wonder Germany is on the warpath against a proposed global standard for how banks calculate the capital they need: Its largest lenders rank among the worst when it comes to how they assess risk. That means Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG will be affected more than most big lenders and may have to raise additional capital, if and when the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision implements a proposed floor for how much their risk-weighting of assets can veer from standardized measures.

The chances that the U.K. will quit the single market and revert to a tariffs regime have grown more likely with the resignation of the British envoy to the European Union, an experienced Brussels insider who was reviled by the leading Brexit supporters, Bloomberg News reported. Backers of a clean break from the EU cheered the departure of Ivan Rogers as a sign the U.K. government is committed to regaining complete control of immigration, laws and budget even if that means fraying trade ties.

German inflation jumped to within a whisker of the European Central Bank target in December, hitting the highest level in more than three years and providing the euro zone bank with evidence its loose monetary policy is working, Reuters reported. The surprisingly strong surge in consumer prices, however, may put a damper on Germans' appetite for shopping as higher inflation means consumers have less real income to spend.

The liquidators of BHS are conducting a detailed investigation into property transactions that took place during the regimes of Sir Philip Green and Dominic Chappell, including whether the directors of the retailer breached their duties, The Guardian reported. Insolvency practitioners have a legal duty to review the conduct of the directors of a collapsed company, but the scope and depth of the BHS investigation is rare. FRP Advisory is undertaking a “massive exercise in data collation”, according to one source close to the winding up of BHS.

We already knew 2016 had been a difficult year for North Sea oil, and the revelation that 16 firms in the sector became insolvent last year only confirms it, The Herald reported. What is alarming is the pace of these insolvencies – there were just two the year before – and the likelihood that many more firms may be teetering on the brink. A 25 per cent increase in oil prices in the last quarter of 2016 may herald better times ahead, and if the price stabilises at above US$50 a barrel, that would be a significant improvement since world oil prices collapsed dramatically in 2014.