Deutsche Bank chairman Paul Achleitner has ruled out a European merger or a state bailout after the lender’s mortgage settlement with the US department of justice, the Irish Times reported. The bank, Germany’s biggest, last week announced a $7.2 billion (€6.8 billion) settlement with the US department of justice over its sale and pooling of mortgage securities in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. “The management board in principle looks at everything that could help the business,” Mr Achleitner said in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

AIB has dramatically stepped up its pursuit of defaulting borrowers and is now by far the most litigious Irish lender when it comes to chasing unpaid debts through the High Court, according to an Irish Times analysis of court records, the Irish Times reported. In 2016, the State-owned bank issued almost four times as many High Court debt actions against borrowers as its nearest rival, Bank of Ireland. AIB took 40 per cent more cases against its borrowers last year compared with 2015.

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.

Households are being left with less cash to spend on treats or to stash away as savings as the rising cost of essentials like food and fuel take a bigger chunk out of family budgets, The Guardian reported. A new report on household finances from Lloyds bank echoed other signs that the pound’s steep fall since the Brexit vote is raising import costs for the UK and trickling through to higher prices for consumers.

The Italian government is likely to put in about €6.5 billion to rescue the country’s third-biggest lender Monte dei Paschi di Siena, more than initially expected, sources close to the matter said, the Irish Times reported. The Italian lender needs about €8.8 billion of capital to bolster its balance sheet, the European Central Bank (ECB) said, up from previous estimates of €5 billion. The calculation is based on the results of a 2016 stress test, the bank said in a statement late Monday, citing two letters from the ECB that it received via Italy’s finance ministry.

Romania’s Government approved in the Thursday meeting the decision to postpone by six months the entry into force of the law on personal insolvency, until August 1, next year. The law had to come into force at the beginning of 2017. The Government postponed implementing the law because it requires a complex system, namely setting up 42 insolvency commissions at national level, acquiring the necessary technical apparatus, and adopting the norms for implementing the law. In order for these new structures to operate, they need human and financial resources.

When it extended its bond-purchase program this month, the European Central Bank needed to choose between buying bonds at extremely negative returns or gearing stimulus toward eurozone nations that need it the most, The Wall Street Journal reported. It chose the former. Every move by policy makers in the single-currency eurozone is supposed to avoid benefiting some nations over others. But now, due in part to the design of ECB rules, more stimulus is delivered to the healthiest economies and less to those that are lagging behind.

Bank supervision and anti-money laundering standards need to be toughened in global geopolitical hotspots as a way of tackling the recent decline in so-called correspondent banking, a global group of policymakers has said, the Financial Times reported.

The Italian government cleared the way for the potential rescue of lenders, including Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, by seeking permission from parliament to increase the nation’s public debt by as much as 20 billion euros ($21 billion), Bloomberg reported. Monte dei Paschi Chief Executive Officer Marco Morelli is scampering to find investors to back a private 5 billion-euro capital increase, which also includes a share sale and a debt-for-equity swap.

Around 4,000 retail customers of Banco Espirito Santo who lost their savings when the banking group collapsed in 2014 should get around 60 percent of their money back under a plan presented on Monday by the Portuguese government, Reuters reported. The retail investors have protested and taken legal action to try to get compensation for their losses since the government stepped in to rescue Banco Espirito Santo. This included an injection of 4.9 billion euros ($5.12 billion) into the healthy part of the bank now known as Novo Banco.