The European Central Bank has dealt a blow to Greece’s attempts to rehabilitate its ailing financial system, saying it would wait at least three more weeks before allowing Greek banks access to its ultra-cheap loans, the Financial Times reported. The delay came at Thursday’s ECB meeting in Vienna where policymakers left interest rates on hold even though they marginally raised forecasts for eurozone growth and inflation. The cautious stance defied market expectations of a more robust upgrade in economic projections.

Britain’s departure from the EU poses as big a threat to the global economy as a “hard landing” in China, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has said, The Guardian reported. The Paris-based thinktank said Brexit would have significant costs not just for the UK and Europe, but for the rest of the world. Catherine Mann, the chief economist at the OECD, said the uncertainty caused by the referendum came at a time when the global economy was caught in a low-growth trap.

British fashion retailer Austin Reed Ltd will start winding down as no viable offer was received for the company over a five-week sale process, its joint administrators said, Reuters reported. The retailer will shut its 120 stores by the end of June, which will affect about 1,000 jobs, Austin Reed's administrators at AlixPartners Services UK LLP said in a statement on Tuesday. Five of the company's outlets inside Boundary Mills stores will be sold to AR Operations Ltd. The deal includes the transfer of 28 employees to AR Operations.

Irish consumers continue to save and shirk new loans in favour of paying down existing debt, leading to a significant change in the Irish banking market, the Irish Times reported. Figures from the Central Bank show that household lending slumped by 3.5 per cent in April, compared with the same period in 2015, as mortgage loans fell by € 176 million during the month, or by 2.3 per cent in the year. Households repaid € 1.8 billion more than was advanced in new loans.

The European Central Bank at a policy meeting on Thursday is expected to leave its €1.8 trillion ($2 trillion) stimulus package unchanged and to raise its inflation forecasts for the first time in a year, in a nod to higher oil prices, The Wall Street Journal reported. But nearly 18 months into its massive bond-purchase program, data published Tuesday show that the ECB is still far from hitting its inflation goal of around 2%.

Signs of faltering demand in the housing market are prompting estate agents and analysts to suggest England’s house price boom may be ending, the Financial Times reported.

Members of Sean Quinn’s family are opposing an application for court orders to stop them receiving any further living expenses out of accounts controlled by receivers appointed over assets linked to Quinn companies, the Irish Times reported. It is alleged the living expense payments from the relevant accounts are no longer necessary because the financial circumstances of a number of family members have changed “significantly” since the living expense orders were made in 2012.

The International Monetary Fund stepped back from confrontation on Greece this week — to the delight of eurozone policy-makers above all in Berlin, the Financial Times reported. After months of squaring up against Germany over the fund’s insistence on upfront measures to ease Greece’s enormous debt burden, the IMF signed off on yet another compromise that delays the day of reckoning and left any commitment on debt restructuring implicit at best.

Worldview Capital, the Swiss-Cayman Islands hedge fund that is buying Petroceltic International out of examinership, is gaining full control of the business for a knockdown cash payment of $7.8 million, the Irish Times reported. Creditors of Petroceltic will meet next Monday to vote on a scheme of arrangement assembled by the examiner, Michael McAteer of Grant Thornton. The scheme is certain to pass as Worldview is also the biggest creditor.

Debenhams, the British retail chain with 11 outlets in Ireland employing 2,200 staff, has become embroiled in a row with the Roche family that once owned Roches Stores, the Irish Times reported. Debenhams bought Roches Stores from the Roche family for €29 million in 2006 and rebranded it, although the family held on to the properties. Details of the row have emerged in documents given to the High Court as part of Debenhams’ Irish division’s application for examinership, a form of court protection while it restructures its finances.