Former UK employees of Nortel Networks, the insolvent Canadian telecoms firm, could receive up to two thirds of their long-deferred pension claims after the US and Canadian courts ruled that the company’s remaining assets should be equally divided among all the insolvent parts of the group. Accountancy firm PwC, a financial adviser to the trustees of the Nortel UK Pension Scheme since the company’s 2009 insolvency, said that the unprecedented joint ruling by the courts could set an example in future insolvency cases involving highly integrated multinational companies.

Three-quarters of the world’s workers are temporary, casual or self-employed and this sort of employment is likely to become more prevalent, says the International Labour Organisation. The ILO, a UN agency that specialises in work, analysed employment patterns in 180 countries and found that the “standard” model of permanent full-time employment was “less and less dominant” in rich, developed economies, the Financial Times reported. In developing economies, salaried employment was still growing as a share of the total workforce but that historical trend appeared to be slowing.

German politicians kept up the pressure on Greece over the weekend to implement reforms, with Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel warning Athens in an interview that a third aid package would not be on the cards unless the Greeks made some changes. Greece is fast running out of cash and talks with its lenders have been deadlocked over their demands for Greece to implement reforms, including pension cuts and labor market liberalization.

Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko said in a German newspaper interview that Kiev's foreign lenders should agree to a debt restructuring for the sake of German taxpayers. "The German taxpayers who are financially supporting us via national assistance loans and via the EU have a right for private creditors to share the costs by means of a debt restructuring," she said in an advance extract of an interview due to be published in Handelsblatt on Monday.

To understand why Greece and its creditors have repeatedly failed to put its giant debt burden on a sustainable path, look beyond the current-day headlines about the intransigence of a left-wing government in Athens or the tested patience of officials in Berlin and Brussels, The Wall Street Journal reported. Blame lies more broadly with the flawed political structure of the monetary union’s institutions, where a highly integrated financial system coexists with fragmented and unpredictable governance.

Since the global financial crisis, mankind has learnt to live with a third certainty along with death and taxes — monetary loosening. Central banks have slashed interest rates to record lows and embarked upon unprecedented programmes of asset purchases in an attempt to raise inflation and restart economic growth. The common path on which monetary policy makers have strolled, however, is expected to diverge this year. The timing of the partition and the way in which its side effects are managed hold big implications for financial stability and the global recovery.

Greece on Thursday offered a concession to its international lenders by pushing ahead with the sale of its biggest port, Piraeus. Greece has asked three firms to submit bids for a majority stake in the port, a senior privatisation official said, unblocking a major sale of a public asset as the EU and the IMF demand economic reforms from Athens. Despite the conciliatory move, Germany’s Bundesbank showed no sign of easing off on its hardline stance towards Greece.

Members of businessman Sean Quinn’s family have been refused permission by the High Court to make a crucial amendment to their case aimed at avoiding liability for €2.34 billion loans made to Quinn companies by the former Anglo Irish Bank, the Irish Times reported.

Mario Draghi has warned central banks to beware of the risk that aggressive monetary easing, including mass bond buying, could lead to financial instability and worsen income inequality, the Financial Times reported. The European Central Bank president said the apparent success of policies such as the ECB’s landmark €1.1trn quantitative easing package should not “blind” policy makers to the potential consequences of their actions on risk-taking in financial markets and in exacerbating wealth disparities.

Europe’s top banking supervisor said Greek lenders have never been better equipped to deal with the country’s financial crisis, in a show of confidence in the debt-laden state’s banks, which have been stressed by fleeing deposits and political uncertainty in recent months. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Daniele Nouy, the chairwoman of the Single Supervisory Mechanism—the European Central Bank’s bank-supervisory arm—said Greek banks are demonstrating significant resilience. She said the SSM is monitoring their liquidity and solvency positions very closely.