There is no minimum level of banks' assets that can be wiped out by regulators when a lender is wound down, the European Commission said in draft legislation which softens requirements for lenders. The regulation, seen by Reuters, sets the EU executive on collision course with the recently-established EU body in charge of winding down failing banks, the Single Resolution Board (SRB).

The European Commission has put off a contentious decision on imposing financial sanctions on Spain and Portugal for failing to bring their budget deficits within European Union rules, saying it would revisit the issue in July, after Spain had held a general election, The Wall Street Journal reported. The commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Wednesday the two Iberian countries should take more measures to reduce their budget deficits in 2016 and 2017, and gave them an extra year to get their deficits within 3% of gross domestic product, the bloc’s ceiling.

The European Commission recommended on Wednesday that Bulgaria take action to address several areas of macroeconomic imbalances in 2016 and 2017, the Sofia News Agency reported. The proposal is part of the Commission’s 2016 country-specific recommendations which set out its economic policy guidance for the EU Member States for the next 12 to 18 months. More specifically, the Commission recommended that Bulgaria achieve an annual fiscal adjustment of 0.5% of GDP towards the medium-term budgetary objective in 2016 and in 2017.

Brussels has granted Italy “unprecedented” flexibility in meeting EU debt reduction targets, using its political leeway to the full as it cautiously polices the eurozone’s fiscal rule book, the Financial Times reported. Italy has emerged as a big winner from the European Commission’s latest review of national budget policies, which is set to pull back from — or postpone — painful corrective measures it had the power to impose.

The International Monetary Fund is demanding that Europe free Greece from all payments on its bailout loans until 2040, in the opening bid of a struggle that pits IMF math against German muscle, The Wall Street Journal reported. A new IMF proposal shared with Europe late last week goes far beyond what Greece’s eurozone creditors, led by Germany, have said they are willing to do to help the country regain its financial health. Germany is leading the pressure on the IMF to dilute its demands and rejoin the Greek bailout program as a lender.

KKR & Co. has signed an agreement with two of Greece’s leading banks to manage up to €1.2 billion ($1.35 billion) of their problem loans, the latest effort by the struggling Greek banking sector to restructure bad debts festering on their balance sheets, The Wall Street Journal reported. The U.S.-based private equity group said in a statement it will help manage underperforming assets owned by Alpha Bank and Eurobank, Greece’s third and fourth largest lenders respectively, via its platform, known as Pillarstone.

Yousuf Bhailok, the Preston-based property millionaire, is pulling out of the race to save BHS after administrators told buyers to sweeten their offers by tens of millions of pounds, the Telegraph reported. The administrators are also demanding that all of the retailers shops are included in any bid. Mr Bhailok confirmed to The Telegraph that he had withdrawn his interest. He pulled out of the process after being told that he would have to make an offer to buy all of BHS’s 164 shops, including 40 loss-making stores that are on the administrators' “red list”.

The European Central Bank has come under renewed pressure in Germany, after a group of academics and business people filed a complaint at the country’s highest court over the monetary policymakers’ mass bond-buying programme, the Financial Times reported. The ECB has faced repeated criticism from the economic and political establishment in the eurozone’s largest economy over the policies it has adopted to fight the threat of falling prices.

The Romanian insolvency law should be modified because it’s to permissive, according to Dragos Doros, the president of Romania’s National Fiscal Administration Agency – ANAF, Romania Insider reported. The state has been losing big amounts of money from firms that went into insolvency to take advantage of the holes in the law and avoid paying their taxes. “Almost every company that enters insolvency leads us to the conclusion that we will not get much from it.

Greece will not accept a bailout deal without a concrete agreement for debt relief from the country’s European creditors, a top aide to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said, The Wall Street Journal reported. “We want real solutions, not interim solutions,” Nikos Pappas, Greece’s Minister of State, said in an interview Friday after several days of talks with senior U.S. officials. “No more kicking the can down the road.” Although Mr.