If there were any lingering doubts that the European Central Bank would ratchet up its stimulus of the sluggish eurozone economy, they probably evaporated on Wednesday, the International New York Times reported. New official data showed that the region’s dangerously low inflation rate remained at an annual pace of 0.1 percent in November. That was unchanged from October’s reading, and still far below the central bank’s target of just below 2 percent.

The Bank of England drew a line under the era of bank-bashing on Tuesday, saying it had no desire for new capital buffers and would seek to use its powers to strengthen lenders in good times rather than to tame the credit cycle, the Financial Times reported. The move reflected the government’s post-election shift away from the post-financial crisis emphasis on tighter regulation towards a more emollient stance on the City.

Spanish renewable energy and engineering group Abengoa faces a civil lawsuit after shareholders accused the indebted company of keeping them in the dark when it last week initiated insolvency proceedings, Reuters reported. The firm filed for preliminary protection against creditors after struggling for a year with high debts. It now has four months to reach an agreement with creditors to avoid a full-blown insolvency process and the biggest Spanish bankruptcy on record.

Brussels’ attacks on corporate tax deals risks undermining business certainty in Europe, according to one of the states accused of handing out illegal tax benefits, the Financial Times reported. Pierre Gramegna, finance minister of Luxembourg, said the European Commission’s decision to use the state aid rules to challenge corporate tax agreements “raises so many issues about predictability and certainty”.

Ireland’s biggest insurer RSA made a loss of €176.6 million in 2014 while also receiving a capital injection of €137 million from its UK parent, its latest filed accounts show, the Irish Times reported. These are a legacy of irregularities in its claims and finance functions and issues around bodily injury claims that arose in 2013 and resulted in three senior executives being suspended and litigation between the insurer and its former chief executive in Ireland, Philip Smith.

For the past month, the Bank of England has been telling us ultra-low interest rates should be combined with measures to hold back the growth of consumer credit. On Tuesday, it will reveal whether action will follow the warnings, when it publishes the results of its annual stress tests for banks and its latest financial stability report, the Financial Times reported.

The Austrian supermarket chain Zielpunkt is formally beginning insolvency proceedings with the Vienna court of commerce, The Local reported. Nearly 3,000 employees are expected to lose their jobs before Christmas. Zielpunkt's owner, Upper Austrian businessman Georg Pfeiffer, has been accused of deliberately letting the business fail after gaining control of dozens of Zielpunkt properties and of timing the insolvency filing for the end of November so that he could avoid paying Christmas bonuses to the chain's employees (saving him around €18 million).

Legislation before Cabinet on Tuesday to reduce the term of bankruptcy to one year would be “the single most positive thing” the Government has done for people in debt, according to the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation (IMHO), the Irish Times reported. A Government source on Monday night said it was expected the Bill by Labour TD Willie Penrose would be “broadly accepted” by the Cabinet, although there will be “some minor amendments” by the Government on “mainly technical issues”. In the bill, the discharge term for bankruptcy is reduced from three years to one year.

A new euro zone fund for troubled banks will become operational from January as planned because a sufficient number of member states have completed the legal procedures, EU officials said on Monday, the Irish Times reported. The euro zone’s Single Resolution Fund (SRF) was agreed after the 2009-2012 euro zone debt and banking crisis to make sure that in case of new bankruptcies, banks would foot the bill rather than taxpayers. For the fund to be operational, a minimum number of euro zone states had to ratify by Monday the agreement underpinning the SRF.

The Polish president's economic advisor Zdzislaw Sokal told Reuters that the failure of SK bank which cost other lenders some 1.4 billion zlotys ($348.17 million) would not inflict any damage on the domestic banking sector. Sokal added that President Andrzej Duda was not ready yet to announce specific plans for legislation mandating a conversion of Swiss franc mortgages, one of his pre-election promises. Duda was elected in May. It was not clear yet, Sokal said, whether the conversion would be conducted at historical exchange rates, as this may be subject to discussion.