In a related story, the Financial Times reported that Poland’s banking sector is bracing itself for a $2.5bn hit as the fallout from the Swiss franc’s appreciation continues to hurt the country’s lenders. Seven of the country’s largest banks could see their combined pre-tax profit fall by more than a quarter, rating agency Moody’s said, under a government plan to force them to convert Swiss franc mortgages to Polish zloty.

The European Central Bank’s quantitative easing programme risks fuelling house price bubbles in several countries, according to new research, as investors pour cash into real estate, the Financial Times reported. Germany, Norway and the UK are judged most at risk because ultra-low interest rates and bond yields have fuelled rapid house price growth, said the report by Moody’s Analytics. Anna Zabrodzka, the author, said rising prices and the ECB’s €60bn-a-month asset-buying programme have caused “the risk of house price bubbles” to “resurface”.

One of Spain’s “ghost airports”—expensive projects that were virtually unused—received just one bid in a bankruptcy auction after costing about €1.1 billion ($1.2 billion) to build, The Wall Street Journal reported. The buyer’s offer: €10,000. Ciudad Real’s Central airport, about 235 kilometers south of Madrid, became a symbol of the country’s wasteful spending during a construction boom that ended with the financial crisis of 2008, the year the airport opened. The operator of the airport went bankrupt in 2012 after it failed to draw enough traffic.

TP Ferro, the company that runs a high-speed rail link between Spain and France, filed for protection from creditors after failing to reach a debt restructuring agreement, its French co-owner said, Reuters reported. Construction firm Eiffage, which owns an equal share of the business with Spain's ACS, said late on Friday the link would continue to operate as the shareholders sought a quick solution to what it called an "unsustainable and precarious ... business model".

Ukraine has extended hastily assembled talks with creditors amid predictions that the country could default as early as Friday if an agreement is not reached, the Financial Times reported. Kiev’s desire to avoid the fate of Greece has encouraged both sides to tone down the combative rhetoric that has dogged negotiations over the past three months. However a principal-to-principal meeting held in Washington last week failed to elicit a deal to restructure Ukraine’s $70bn debt burden, although a joint statement declared that progress had been made.

Alexis Tsipras should never have hired Yanis Varoufakis as his finance minister, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Or he should have listened to him, and kept him on. But instead the Greek prime minister chose the worst of all options. He followed Mr Varoufakis’ advice of rejecting the offer of the creditors — until last week.

Ukrainian Eurobonds rose to a five-month high as the nation said progress was made in talks with creditors following a two-month standoff over how to restructure $19 billion of international debt, Bloomberg Business reported. The country’s $2.6 billion of notes due in July 2017 jumped 0.83 cent to 54.08 cents on the dollar at 5:13 p.m. in Kiev, the highest level since Feb. 13.

The capacity for countries to tailor national insolvency laws as they implement new bail-in legislation could store up serious problems for future bank resolution and distort the playing field for bank issuers, market participants have warned, Reuters reported. Germany and Spain have been among the first countries taking steps in transposing the EU's Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) into their national frameworks.

The European Central Bank left interest rates unchanged on Thursday, holding them at record lows as it continues a money-printing scheme to lift the economy, the Irish Times reported. The decision to leave the cost of borrowing unchanged was widely expected after the ECB cut rates to rock-bottom levels last September and said they had hit “the lower bound”. At Thursday’s meeting, the ECB left its main refinancing rate, which determines the cost of credit in the economy, at 0.05 per cent.

Eurozone finance ministers agreed “in principle” to grant Greece an expensive third bailout designed to keep it in the euro. But the likelihood that the prospective three-year deal will fail—possibly before it starts, let alone is completed—is now estimated at higher than 50% by some at the center of events, The Wall Street Journal reported. In the almost six-year history of the debt crisis, never before has the facade of public optimism among leading actors crumbled like it has over the latest deal.