Abengoa SA, the Spanish renewable-energy company scrambling to avoid bankruptcy, reported a 1.2 billion-euro ($1.3 billion) loss for 2015 after its business was revalued amid a financial restructuring process, Bloomberg News reported. The Seville-based company shifted to a loss after posting net income of 125.3 million euros the previous year, according to a regulatory filing Monday. The loss was mainly due to “negative impacts” of 878 million euros, related to a “viability plan” developed by adviser Alvarez & Marsal, according to the filing.

UK households and companies started 2016 in a free-spending mood, loading up on debt to finance cars, mortgages and corporate loans, the Financial Times reported. Figures from the Bank of England showed unsecured lending to households, mostly car loans rather than credit card debt, grew 9.1 per cent in the year to January, the most for a decade. Mortgage approvals have recovered from the 2015 dip, and loan growth to small and large companies is growing again on an annual basis, for the first time since a consistent series began in 2012.

British financial regulators said on Monday that they would continue to exempt small banks and similarly sized financial institutions from European rules that cap bankers’ bonuses, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported.

A Belgian magistrate judge is investigating whether the Swiss bank UBS engaged in fraud, money laundering and other crimes in an effort to help wealthy individuals avoid taxes, the Brussels prosecutor’s office said on Friday, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. UBS is suspected of having directly approached Belgian customers, without going through its Belgian subsidiary, to encourage clients to engage in transactions meant to evade taxes. UBS acknowledged the inquiry, but it said little more.

Italy — the eurozone’s third-largest economy and second-largest manufacturer — did finally emerge from a bruising triple-dip recession in 2015 when it recorded 0.7 per growth, the Financial Times reported. But hopes of a strong acceleration in the pace of the recovery in 2016 have already dimmed thanks primarily to international factors, such as emerging market weakness and the turmoil afflicting the global financial markets since the start of the year. That sparked a sharp drop in Italian equity prices, particularly those of the country's banks.

Indebted Spanish energy firm Abengoa, on the brink of becoming the country's largest ever bankruptcy, does not have enough cash to pay February wages, its chairman told local employees in an emailed letter on Friday. According to the document, seen by Reuters, Jose Abascal also said negotiations between the firm and creditors over a wide-ranging refinancing deal were close to the finish line and he hoped the situation could be resolved "in the next days." An Abengoa spokeswoman declined to comment.

A new deadlock over Greece’s finances is complicating last year’s brittle bailout deal, just as the country nears a showdown with the rest of Europe over efforts that would keep migrants stuck within its borders, The Wall Street Journal reported. The struggle on two fronts risks overwhelming the fragile government under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his ruling left-wing Syriza party, which barely managed to keep Greece in the euro last summer, even before the migration crisis deepened the strains between Greece and the rest of Europe.

City brokers and smaller banks are on course to win a reprieve from EU rules on bonuses that regulators and the industry have warned could saddle companies with unnecessary administrative costs, the Financial Times reported. Věra Jourová, the member of the European Commission in charge of the pay rules, has concluded that new bonus rules will either have to be applied more flexibly or redrafted, according to people briefed on the matter. The reassessment arose from a bureaucratic bungle, those people said.

In 2013 GSO, a hedge fund backed by the private equity group Blackstone, made a loan to a Spanish gambling company. The terms of the loan were designed so that whatever happened, GSO would make a profit on credit derivatives it had bought as insurance against a debt default by the company, the Financial Times reported. Now GSO is accusing a rival of adopting a similar strategy in a battle over the debt of Norske Skog, a distressed Norwegian paper company.

Belfast’s key development sites are now “free from the burden of Nama debt” and the city is once again attracting interest from developers and investors, according to the chief executive of the city council, the Irish Times reported. Suzanne Wylie today launched a new Belfast City Council initiative which aims to attract £1 billion (€1.3bn) of new development investment for Belfast, which she believes will then help to deliver “tens of thousands of jobs”.