The Ukrainian government Thursday welcomed a long-delayed emergency payment of $1 billion from the International Monetary Fund, a move that paved the way for further international aid to help bolster the country’s fragile finances, The Wall Street Journal reported. “The positive decision of the IMF suggests that the world recognizes that there are reforms in Ukraine, there is qualitative and positive change in Ukraine, and the country is moving in the right direction,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a statement.

The number of German companies filing for insolvency fell further in the first half of the year after reaching a record low in 2015, as Europe's biggest economy enjoys a prolonged upswing, data showed on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The number of companies registering as insolvent fell by 5 percent to some 11,000 compared to the first six months in the previous year, the Federal Statistics Office said.

Brussels is to venture into sensitive areas such as national insolvency laws and tax as it redoubles its efforts to forge a common EU capital market, the Financial Times reported. Valdis Dombrovskis, the European commissioner in charge of financial services policy, moved to end speculation that Britain’s vote to leave the EU might spell the end of ambitious plans unveiled two years ago to build a capital markets union, saying instead that Brexit only increased the need for the project.

Investors are reluctant to back Monte dei Paschi di Siena's bid to raise billions of euros, leading fund managers and a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, posing a huge challenge for a new CEO seeking to save the Italian bank. The lender, which is expected to name a new chief executive on Wednesday, must raise up to 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion) as part of an emergency rescue plan to stave off the risk of being wound down and a wider banking crisis that would send shockwaves across Europe.

At the end of May 2016 a total of £2.2 billion was owed to banks – a rise of £177 million on the previous year, and the seventh year in a row that debt levels have increased, The Courier reported. In addition to this, farms have an estimated £1.4 billion of liabilities from hire purchases, lease arrangements and money borrowed from family members and other sources, according to Scotland’s Chief Statistician. The figures, which show bank farm debt is the highest since records began in 1972, come after problems with a new IT system caused delays getting European subsidies to farmers.

ABN Amro Group NV could eliminate more than 1,000 jobs as the Dutch bank ramps up a restructuring plan designed to reduce costs, The Wall Street Journal reported. ABN Amro said Monday in a letter to its works council that it is considering scrapping 975 to 1,375 jobs in the next couple of years, a move that would reduce annual costs by €195 million ($219 million) to €225 million. The bank, which is controlled by the Dutch government, employs around 22,000 people worldwide. The bank had already hinted at job losses when it presented its second-quarter results in August.

More than €50 billion worth of non-performing bank loans (NPLs) remained in place in Ireland at the end of 2015, according to a stocktake published on Monday by the European Central Bank. This was in spite of €74 billion worth of face-value loans being transferred from Irish banks to the National Asset Management Agency for work-out after the crash, and a further €40 billion reduction in NPLs in the two years from the end of 2013.

Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras pledged to seek lower primary budget-surplus targets after the country’s current bailout program expires in 2018, which he said will lead to lower tax burdens for the Greeks, The Wall Street Journal reported. “Our goal is to de-escalate the primary surplus to 2.5% in 2019 and 2% in 2020,” the Greek Prime Minister said during his speech at the annual international trade fair in Thessaloniki, Greece, late Saturday.

Three former Tesco executives have been charged with fraud in connection with an accounting scandal that rocked the British supermarket giant two years ago, investigators said on Friday, the International New York Times reported. The charges stem from a criminal investigation dating to October 2014, after the company announced that it had overstated its first-half profit by 263 million pounds, about $420 million at the time, and that it had suspended several executives for accounting irregularities.

The European Central Bank left its €1.7 trillion ($1.9 trillion) stimulus unchanged at a policy meeting Thursday, brushing off concerns over economic shock waves from Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and disappointing investors expecting the ECB to act again soon, The Wall Street Journal reported. The decision to stand pat, even as new forecasts showed the ECB missing its inflation target for years, underlines how central banks are approaching the limits of what they can achieve without support from other policy areas, notably governments.