Time is running out to save the British steel sector, steelmakers and unions warned on Friday following news of hundreds more possible job cuts, Reuters reported. Tata Steel, the biggest steelmaker in the country, is expected to cut around 1,200 jobs at its Scunthorpe plant in northern England, a union source said earlier. The firm has already cut thousands of UK jobs since it entered the sector in 2007. A Tata spokesman said it continued to review the performance of its business, without addressing reports of job losses.

Norske Skogindustrier ASA’s senior and junior bondholders have presented competing plans to restructure the Norwegian papermaker’s $1 billion of debt, according to people familiar with the matter. Rothschild and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which are advising a group holding Norske Skog’s 290 million euros ($329 million) of senior bonds due 2019, met with the company to discuss a possible debt-for-equity swap, said two people, who asked not to be identified because negotiations are private.

Poor access to credit has been — and remains — one of the biggest clouds hanging over the tepid recovery in Italy’s economy, which has just started to grow this year after three years of stagnation and recession, the Financial Times reported. Small and medium-sized companies, which form the backbone of the Italian economy, were hit the hardest as banks retrenched in the wake of the economic and financial crisis that left them saddled with high volumes of non-performing loans (NPLs).

A legal fight is looming over a $3bn bond owed by Ukraine to Russia after Moscow refused to join other bondholders in a debt restructuring and both sides said they were prepared to take the matter to court, the Financial Times reported. Russia emerged on Thursday as the lone holdout in the $18bn restructuring deal offered by cash-strapped Kiev — involving a 20 per cent writedown on the value of its debt and extended repayments — which other private shareholders voted to accept.

Risky lending by the banks is not the solution to the housing crisis, the deputy governor of the Central Bank, Stefan Gerlach, has said. Referring to rules on loan to value (LTV) and loan to income (LTI) ratios introduced by the Central Bank’s earlier this year, he said an examination of what had happened when the Irish property market crashed showed that loans with high ratios had very high default rates, the Irish Times reported.

British banks may be forced to increase the capital they keep on hand by as much as $5 billion to comply with new rules intended to protect their British retail banking businesses in a financial crisis, the Bank of England said on Thursday, the International New York Times reported. The central bank is requiring British lenders with more than 25 billion pounds, or about $38 billion, to wall off their retail banking operations in the country by 2019, a practice known as ring-fencing.

Representatives from the Troika will travel to Dublin next month as part of the fourth post-bailout review of the Irish economy, as controversy over Ireland’s compliance with EU stability and growth pact rules emerged, the Irish Times reported. The European Commission declined to comment on claims Ireland’s budget may be in breach of EU debt and deficit targets, following suggestions by the head of the Fiscal Advisory Council, John McHale, that Ireland’s budget was too expansionary and could be in breach of EU rules under the Stability and Growth Pact.

German regional lender HSH Nordbank could agree with the European Commission as early as next week to offload billions of euros in troubled assets onto its government owners and avoid the risk of being shut down, sources said. The ship financier, majority owned by the regional states of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg, had to seek support from its owners after being hit by the slump in global trade in the wake of the financial crisis. The European Commission requires banks that receive state aid to undergo substantial restructuring and shrink their balance sheets.

Greece’s leftwing Syriza-led government has presented more tax and pension reforms to parliament amid growing concerns that the package of measures will prolong the country’s six-year recession, the Financial Times reported. The proposals are being discussed under emergency procedures so that Greece can meet a weekend deadline set by creditors for implementing a tough front-loaded package of fiscal and structural measures in return for an €86bn bailout.

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm is charged with 33 offences, including forgery, conspiracy to defraud, false accounting and breaches of Irish company law and EU law, US court records show, the Irish Times reported. Each offence carries maximum sentences ranging from five years’ imprisonment up to an unlimited term of imprisonment, according to legal records submitted to the US District Court in Massachusetts. Details of the charges against Mr Drumm emerged after the legal case against him was unsealed and made public by the American court.