French President François Hollande’s government said Wednesday it will ramp up austerity measures in the next two years to stay on track with budget targets, despite a looming presidential election, The Wall Street Journal reported. The French finance ministry said it would find an additional €3.8 billion ($4.31 billion) of savings this year and another €5 billion in 2017 to ensure France meets its pledge of getting the budget deficit under the European limit of 3% of economic output. The belt-tightening indicates Mr.

Italian officials and financial firms agreed to create a multibillion-euro fund to help weakened banks raise capital and unload bad loans, as the nation tries to assuage investor jitters and avert a crisis, the Irish Times reported. The new fund, named Atlante, will be supported by numerous institutions, its manager, Quaestio Capital Management SGR, said late Monday after more than a week of meetings among banks, insurers and state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti.

The International Monetary Fund said Tuesday that a British exit from the European Union risks severely damaging the global economy, adding its voice to an intense debate ahead of the country’s June referendum on the question, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Washington-based fund listed the possibility of Britain leaving the EU as one of seven major risks to the global economy in the year ahead, alongside worries over the health of the Chinese economy and turbulence in financial markets.

Paris and Berlin are pressing industrialised nations to pull together a common blacklist of territories that breach transparency standards, in the toughest government responses yet to the Panama Papers affair, the Financial Times reported. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, and Michel Sapin, his French counterpart, also emphasised the need for sharing and publishing the names of the ultimate beneficiaries of all corporate structures, including shell companies, trusts and foundations that can offer anonymity to their users.

Greece and its creditors paused negotiations early Tuesday without reaching an agreement over the country’s bailout review and will continue next week after the International Monetary Fund’s annual spring meetings, according to the Greek Finance Minister, The Wall Street Journal reported. “Progress has been made on the issues needed in order to have a deal,” Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said. Mr.

The Spanish lender CaixaBank is set to proceed with a takeover offer for BPI, a Portuguese bank, after reaching an 11th-hour agreement with an Angolan investor who had blocked its bid, the International New York Times reported. BPI announced late on Sunday that a deal had been reached between its two main shareholders, CaixaBank and Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s longstanding president, after a yearlong dispute.

A disgraced former Spanish banker, Mario Conde, was arrested on Monday as part of an investigation into whether he fraudulently repatriated the equivalent of nearly $15 million in money he had hidden offshore while presiding over the collapse of one of Spain’s largest banks, Banesto, more than two decades ago, the International New York Times reported. Mr. Conde was arrested along with six other people, including two of his children and a son-in-law. The arrest was ordered by a judge from Spain’s national court who is inquiring whether Mr.

A referendum to determine whether Britain will leave the European Union has been set for June 23. Until voters decide whether they would rather be in or out, investors will have to decide whether to be in or out of assets in Britain and other parts of Europe, the International New York Times reported. Neither decision will be easy. The referendum outcome is a tossup in polls, and analysts are divided on whether the country would be better off in or out of the 28-nation bloc.

Austria became the first European country to use a new law to share losses of a failed bank with senior creditors as it slashed the value of debt owed by Heta Asset Resolution AG, Bloomberg News reported. The Austrian banking regulator cut Heta’s senior liabilities by 54 percent and extended the maturities of all eligible debt to Dec. 31, 2023, it said in a statement published on its website on Sunday, to help cover an 8 billion-euro ($9.1 billion) hole in Heta’s balance sheet.

Italy is rushing to cobble together an industry-led rescue to address mounting concerns over the solidity of a banking sector whose woes pose a risk to the wider eurozone economy, the Financial Times reported. Finance minister Pier Carlo Padoan has called a meeting in Rome on Monday with executives from Italy’s largest financial institutions to agree final details of a “last resort” bailout plan.