Banks need to shake up bonus-heavy pay structures and attack corporate cultures that encourage excessive short-term risk-taking, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned on Wednesday. Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director, said much had been done on the regulatory front since the 2008 global financial crisis to crack down on banks and bankers and avoid a repeat of the turmoil, the Financial Times reported. But she warned, in a Washington speech , that risks to financial stability were still elevated and the “culture” of the financial sector was at least partly to blame.

The European Central Bank will decide after next week’s meeting of euro region finance ministers whether to tighten Greek access to emergency liquidity, two people familiar with the matter said, Bloomberg News reported. The ECB is prepared to raise the discount demanded on Greek collateral to a level last seen in 2014 unless the country’s government shows a willingness to compromise in bailout talks, said one of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. An ECB spokesman declined to comment.

Moldova will step up an investigation into the disappearance of more than $1 billion from three banks, the head of the central bank told Reuters on Tuesday, after around 10,000 people protested over the scandal at the weekend. Last year Moldova placed Banca de Economii, Banca Sociala and Unibank under central bank administration after a series of non-performing loans bankrupted the lenders, which together account for up to 20 percent of the tiny former Soviet republic's banking system in terms of assets.

Ireland has re-emerged as one of Europe’s top performers but high debt levels continue to pose an “uncertainty”, according to the European Commission. The commission forecast economic activity here would remain “resilient” in 2015 and 2106 with domestic demand taking over from exports as the main driver of growth. In its Spring statement, the Commission revised downwards slightly its growth forecast for Ireland for next year, predicting growth of 3.5 per cent next year compared to 3.6 per cent forecast four months ago.

Greece blamed its creditors for the failure to end the impasse over its fiscal crisis as government bonds slumped and the European Central Bank weighs how much more liquidity to offer its financial system, Bloomberg News reported. No deal will be possible until the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund reduce the number of red lines they’re demanding, a government official said on Tuesday. The comments clouded the outlook for bailout talks, which some officials had said were making progress, and accelerated a selloff in the country’s stocks and bonds.

The local court in Freiburg (Germany) on May 4th, 2015 communicated that it decided on May 1st, 2015, to open the insolvency proceedings regarding the assets of Solar-Fabrik AG (Freiburg), the PV company announced in an Ad hoc-News. The court ordered Dr. Thomas Kaiser of the law firm Kaiser & Sozien (Freiburg) as the insolvency administrator of the assets of Solar-Fabrik AG.

Barclays Plc is entitled to $4 billion in assets stemming from the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapse, as the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the bankruptcy trustee for the firm’s brokerage business, Bloomberg News reported. The justices left intact a federal appeals court ruling that said Barclays acquired the assets as part of a hastily drafted purchase agreement in September 2008. Barclays bought most of Lehman’s North American brokerage assets in that deal. The trustee, James Giddens, sought to recoup the money, most of which is already in Barclays’ possession.

Greece has vowed to honour heavy debt repayments over the coming weeks but says it is counting on international creditors to release billions of euros in rescue funds before the end of the month as crisis talks between the two sides grind on, The Guardian reported. But as the European commission described discussions over the long weekend as constructive, albeit with more work to be done, one Greek minister criticised the International Monetary Fund’s “extreme” demands for austerity cuts.

The Supreme Court has ruled that Olympic Airlines is unable to enter the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) because it did not have an establishment in the UK during its insolvency proceedings, Employee Benefits reported. The case, Trustees of the Olympic Airlines SA Pension and Life Assurance Scheme (Appellants) v Olympic Airlines, relates to the airline’s insolvency in 2009. It entered insolvency in Greece and despite having UK-based operations and a UK defined benefit (DB) pension scheme, it did not have a subsidiary firm in the UK.

Insolvency specialist Begbies Traynor Group warned yesterday that its full year results would be below market expectations thanks to the declining rate of company failures, domain-b.com reported. According to Begbies, the number of UK corporate insolvencies in the first quarter of 2015 were 4,014, a 11.3 per cent decline against the same period last year, and was the lowest level of quarterly appointments since the fourth quarter of 2007.