A Bulgarian court of appeals ruled on Friday that the initial date of insolvency for Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank) was June 20 last year, increasing the chances of the bank's receivers to recover more of its assets, Reuters reported. The central bank closed Corpbank's operations and took control over the Balkan country's fourth-largest lender on June 20, 2014 after a bank run triggered the biggest banking crisis in the country since the 1990s. A court declared Corpbank bankrupt in April, setting the date of its insolvency at Nov. 6, when the central bank revoked the bank's licence.

In his 50 years at the state farm here, Volodymyr Polutskiy says his work has dwindled from producing silk for Red Army parachutes to eking out a living chopping wood and growing wheat, The Wall Street Journal reported. Now, Ukraine’s government is trying to sell this farm and hundreds of other state-owned enterprises, hoping that private investment and management will revive the mostly unprofitable businesses and bring funds to its recession-hit budget.

Greece’s prime minister accused Europe’s leaders of attempting to “blackmail” Greek voters, just hours after apparently holding out an olive branch to the country’s creditors by accepting most of the terms of the economic reform plan they had tabled last weekend. Eurozone officials said they were baffled by the mixed messages coming from Greece, which this week missed a €1.5bn payment to the International Monetary Fund and has been forced to impose capital controls to avert a financial meltdown.

The trial of three former Anglo Irish Bank officials has been adjourned until Thursday so the defence can examine freshly uncovered documents, the Irish Times reported. The trial was due to resume on Wednesday morning. However Judge Patrick McCartan told the jury of six men and six women documents sought by the defence had only just been discovered by the prosecution and that the defence needed the rest of the day to examine them.

The freezing of Greece’s banking system is the most dramatic moment of the country’s five-year debt crisis—and perhaps its most pivotal. Since Monday, Greeks can get only €60 a day at cash machines and can’t transfer money abroad, The Wall Street Journal reported. How long the remaining cash lasts and how unsettled Greeks become will be big factors in Sunday’s referendum on creditors’ demands for more austerity in exchange for more bailout funds. The tighter the squeeze, the more Greeks might vote “yes” to reconcile with creditors, analysts say.

Three bidders have submitted binding offers for Novo Banco, the successor to Banco Espirito Santo after a state rescue last year, the Bank of Portugal said on Tuesday, without naming the institutions. A source close to Chinese group Fosun International told Reuters earlier the company had submitted its offer before Tuesday's deadline. The list of contenders shrank from five that the central bank picked in April and who had until the end of June to present binding bids.

Italian bonds halted a two-day drop and the nation sold €6.8 billion of debt, a sign of investor confidence that fallout from Greece’s financial crisis can be contained, the Irish Times reported. Italy’s sale included €2.9 billion of 10-year bonds and €1.5 billionof five-year securities. While the bid-to- cover ratio, a gauge of investor demand, was the lowest since December for the longer-maturity bonds, it increased for the shorter-dated notes.

Greece on Tuesday added its name to a roster that includes some of the world’s poorest and worst governed nations, including Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Zimbabwe, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Those are a few of the countries that have missed payments to the International Monetary Fund — as Greece did Tuesday, when it failed to make a loan payment of about 1.5 billion euros, or $1.7 billion, to the fund. The International Monetary Fund does not use the term default. It instead places countries that miss their payments in so-called arrears.

Bookmaker Ladbrokes Ireland’s parent’s rescue plan for the troubled business has trumped alternatives proposed by rival Boylesports and others, the Irish Times reported. Kenneth Fennell, the examiner appointed by the High Court to oversee the rescue of Ladbrokes Ireland told creditors and other interested parties on Tuesday that he favours the plan put forward by the chain’s UK parent. That proposal involves closing 60 out of 196 of its betting shops in the Republic, cutting 250 of its 840 jobs and repudiating a number of its leases.

The founding father of UK’s bank ringfencing has dismissed the idea that by pushing retail banking units into standalone entities they could “go wandering off” and disregard parent groups’ strategy, the Financial Times reported. Some senior bankers have attacked new rules that force the biggest lenders to hive off their consumer lending operations into separately governed and funded structures, arguing that they will lose control of a key part of their business.