French government officials and bankers gathered in Paris Wednesday to promote the city as a financial capital of Europe that could take over from London after the U.K. vote to leave the European Union, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a rare moment of unity across the political and corporate divide in France, Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls addressed hundreds of bankers alongside Valérie Pécresse, the center-right head of the Paris region who has led the charge to lure financial services to the French capital in the wake of the U.K. referendum.

The Bank of England moved to boost the U.K. economy in the wake of Britain’s vote to exit the European Union, marking one of the first instances of a major central bank relaxing bank-capital requirements to mitigate a possible economic slowdown, The Wall Street Journal reported. The central bank said it agreed to ease regulatory restraints on U.K. banks in a push aimed at allowing them to lend an extra £150 billion ($199 billion) to U.K. businesses and households and to keep the economy flush with credit. The move reduced the amount of capital banks must hold against loan portfolios.

Britain’s vote to leave the European Union could hurt Norway’s exports to Britain and hit the profitability of the Nordic country’s banking, insurance and property sectors, the International Monetary Fund said, Reuters reported. Britain is Norway’s third-biggest destination for goods produced by its mainland economy, which excludes the volatile oil and shipping sector, with an eight-per cent share. Mainland exports are primarily seafood, including salmon, but Norway is also a major gas supplier to Britain and its $860-billion wealth fund, the world’s largest, is a major foreign investor.

Spain and Portugal are on course to become the first ever eurozone countries to be sanctioned for breaching EU fiscal rules, in a move set to inflame political tensions over how dogmatic Brussels should be in policing national budgets, the Financial Times reported. The European Commission on Tuesday concluded that the two countries had failed to take “effective action” to meet EU deficit rules, according to people briefed on the talks.

The price of a bond issued by Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Italy’s third-largest lender, plunged more than a tenth on Tuesday in the latest sign of growing investor alarm over bad debts within the country’s financial institutions, the Financial Times reported. Anxiety has spread from stock markets, where shares in the world’s oldest bank have fallen by more than a quarter this week to reach a record low, after the European Central Bank demanded it shed another €10bn in bad loans.

Three former Barclays bankers have been found guilty of conspiring to rig a key interest rate in a high profile trial, the Irish Times reported. Jonathan Mathew (35), a Libor submitter, along with traders Jay Merchant (45) and Alex Pabon (37), were found guilty of conspiring with others at Barclays to manipulate US dollar Libor – the benchmark interbank lending rate – for more than two years, until September 2007. They had denied wrongdoing in a 14-week trial at Southwark Crown Court in London.

UK insurers have warned that Brexit is unlikely to lead to a big dilution of the EU’s Solvency II capital rules. Solvency II, which came into force at the start of this year, is seen by many in the industry as an expensive, bureaucratic regime that puts them at a disadvantage when doing business outside the EU. Some people hope that Brexit will be an opportunity to roll it back.

Britain’s vote to leave the EU has produced dire predictions for the U.K. economy. The damage to the rest of Europe could be more immediate and potentially more serious. Nowhere is the risk concentrated more heavily than in the Italian banking sector, The Wall Street Journal reported. In Italy, 17% of banks’ loans are sour. That is nearly 10 times the level in the U.S., where, even at the worst of the 2008-09 financial crisis, it was only 5%. Among publicly traded banks in the eurozone, Italian lenders account for nearly half of total bad loans.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said the central bank would probably need to pump more stimulus into Britain's economy over the summer after the shock of last week's decision by voters to leave the European Union, Reuters reported. Carney also said he would not consider resigning from the Bank if his critics from the referendum's Leave campaign, who were angered by his warnings of a Brexit hit to Britain's economy, end up filling a power vacuum in the government.

Within hours of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, it started, the International New York Times reported. A Lithuanian lawmaker wrote to the chief executive of HSBC, trying to court the bank. A website promoting Frankfurt as an attractive location to invest went live. A Berlin start-up published an online how-to guide for anyone looking to move to the German capital.