Hundreds of thousands of Greeks walked off their jobs on Thursday to protest austerity economics, as officials of the leftist-led government wrangled with the country’s international creditors over the terms of Greece’s third bailout. At least one Athens protest turned violent, the International New York Times reported. The 24-hour walkout shut down public services, forced the cancellation of flights and disrupted public transportation across the country. Ferries remained moored in ports, hospitals were operating with reduced staff, and museums and archaeological sites were closed.

Mario Draghi has signalled that the European Central Bank is ready to boost its stimulus programmes next month as inflation wanes and economic prospects worsen, the Irish Times reported. “Signs of a sustained turnaround in core inflation have somewhat weakened,” the ECB president told a hearing in the European Parliament in Brussels on Thursday. The odds that the ECB will cut its deposit rate in December climbed to 100 per cent from about 88 per cent before the speech, ECB-dated Eonia forwards showed.

A reluctance to pursue distressed borrowers is one reason why Piraeus is judged to be the most precarious among Greece’s four top lenders, according to the European Central Bank’s latest health check of the sector, the Financial Times reported. As Greece’s biggest bank, shoring up the finances of Piraeus, and those of its peers, will be crucial in kick-starting lending to the country’s economy, helping it to climb out of a brutal recession that has shrunk the economy by almost a quarter since 2009.

The European Central Bank has made a fresh push to level the playing field for lenders in the single currency area, unveiling a proposal to hammer out major differences in banking rules across the region’s 19 member states, the Financial Times reported. Harmonising disparate banking standards has long been a priority for the ECB’s supervisor-in-chief, Danièle Nouy, who believes this is vital to encourage more cross-border lending and fairer supervision.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has warned of big threats to Ireland’s “robust” growth, among them the risk of another property bubble, the Irish Times reported. Amid anxiety in the EU/IMF troika about Government moves to loosen the fiscal stance, the OECD said in a new forecast that Budget 2016 was “reasonable” once Dublin maintained progress to eliminate deficits in the public finances. The latest assessment from the OECD came as Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said he was confident the EU Commission will approve the Budget in the coming weeks.

Falling public spending will undermine the ability of public services to deal with social crises, a think tank has warned, the Irish Times reported. More than half the income gains of the last five years have gone to the top 10 per cent of earners, the Think-tank for Action on Social Change (Tasc) added.

Greece and its European creditors have run into a dispute over Athens’ new €86bn bailout, forcing a delay in a €2bn aid payment and raising questions over whether the government is returning to the brinkmanship tactics that embittered relations with Brussels earlier this year, the Financial Times reported. Eurozone finance ministers were scheduled to sign off the €2bn tranche at a Monday evening meeting in Brussels, but ministers said a stand-off over repossession protections for homeowners would delay the payment for at least a week, and potentially longer.

A group of financial policy makers has outlined a new framework intended to keep banks around the world from becoming “too big to fail” and requiring government bailouts in a future financial crisis, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. The proposed rules would require the world’s biggest banks to maintain capital buffers that could absorb potential losses when a bank is failing and prevent further pressure on the financial system. Regulators are seeking to shift the costs of a failing bank to its investors, rather than on taxpayers in a future financial upheaval.

Two dozen pilots and stewardesses from the Russian airline Transaero observed a minute’s silence in the centre of St Petersburg on Sunday for those who died in the crash of Metrojet flight 9268 in Egypt last weekend, the Financial Times reported. But the men and women in the dark blue coats were just as anguished over the fate of their own airline. They have joined protests against the looming bankruptcy of Transaero, Russia’s second-largest carrier and the country’s largest privately owned one.

Turkey's Yuksel Insaat is facing a revolt from a growing faction of investors who have vowed not to vote in favour of a critical restructuring plan, which could push one of the country's largest construction companies into insolvency. Yuksel Insaat, which is the operating company of Yuksel Holding, is trying to restructure US$200m 9.5% bonds, equal to more than half of its debt. The notes mature on November 10. The issuer is due to have a Scheme of Arrangement hearing at the UK High Court a day before the notes' maturity.