More than a fifth of Europe’s part-time workers are underemployed, while the number who have given up looking for work altogether has increased, according to official figures which underline the dire state of the labour market in the region’s most crisis-hit economies, the Financial Times reported. Across the European Union 9.8m part-time workers — or 22 per cent — worked less hours than they would have liked to last year, according to Eurostat’s annual poll of the EU labour market.

Ukraine has cleared the first hurdle in a $15bn bid to avoid financial collapse. Investors in Ukreximbank, the state-owned lender, voted on Monday to extend repayment of a bond that is included in a plan to restructure the country’s debt and shore up its fragile finances, the Financial Times reported. The deal raised hopes that Kiev will now be able to reach a deal with the rest of its creditors. Ukreximbank’s $750m bond is the first due for repayment out of 29 bonds and loans that Ukraine hopes to renegotiate over the next four years.

Credit unions cannot become complacent despite having avoided the worst case scenario envisaged at the time of the financial crisis, according to the Irish League of Credit Unions registrar. In a speech due to be given at the league’s AGM, Anne Marie McKiernan was to say that while the feared failure of a significant number of credit unions had not occurred, the sector could have false sense of security and should not undo the “hard-won financial improvements” of recent years.

UBS's chairman said a default by Greece is seen by the International Monetary Fund as "systemically controllable" and he believed it would have a negligible impact on the Swiss bank itself, according to a newspaper interview published on Saturday. Athens is lurching closer to bankruptcy, with its next big test on May 12, when it is due to pay 750 million euros to the IMF. Euro zone finance ministers told Greece on Friday that its leftist government would get no more aid until it agreed a complete economic reform plan.

The Bulgarian central bank said it will challenge a court decision setting the date of insolvency of Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank) which could be important to recovering assets, Reuters reported. Corpbank collapsed in June, after a bank run triggering the biggest banking crisis in the Bulgaria since the 1990s. An independent audit of its books showed serious failings in the way it was run that prompted central bank administrators at the lender to write off two thirds of its assets. The Balkan country is preparing to collect the bank's assets and pay back its creditors.

A “stark” divide between the north and south of England has opened up since the recession in rates of personal insolvency, highlighting the uneven nature of the economic recovery, the Financial Times reported. In London and the home counties, insolvency rates fell 18 per cent and 16 per cent respectively in the five years from 2008 as the services industries staged a concerted recovery, according to research by the accountancy firm Moore Stephens. But in the northeast and northwest of England, personal insolvency rates rose by 5 and 4 per cent respectively.

The home province of defunct lender Hypo Alpe Adria, Carinthia, is asking Vienna for financial support, saying it will run out of money by the beginning of June without external help, Reuters reported. Carinthia provided debt guarantees for years to fuel Hypo's rapid expansion before the practice was stopped in 2007, but the last ones do not expire until around 2017. With an annual budget of 2.2 billion euros ($2.36 billion), Carinthian officials have said the province cannot honour nearly 11 billion euros of backing for Hypo debt that creditors facing a "haircut" could demand.

The slump in oil prices looks set to claim its highest-profile victim after a North Sea drilling firm warned it was facing collapse unless it can bring in urgent funding, The Scotsman reported. Trap Oil, which is quoted on London’s Alternative Investment Market, said yesterday it was “highly likely” to run out of cash within three months as a result of “depressed” Brent crude prices, which have tumbled by about half since last summer. The company’s only producing asset is the Athena oil field, in which it has a 15 per cent stake.

Germany's largest power producer RWE will explore a split of its businesses if the sector's crisis intensifies, Chief Executive Peter Terium said, keeping open the option of a drastic overhaul similar to rival E.ON. Germany's utilities have seen their profits and share prices tumble as they grapple with a restructuring of the energy sector that has promoted solar and wind generation at the expense of their gas-fired power stations. "We want our company, RWE, to remain active in all parts of the value chain," he told shareholders at the group's annual general meeting on Thursday.

The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), which manages Ireland’s national debt, was not consulted by the government about the September 2008 bank guarantee, despite two of its most senior officials being in Government Buildings on the night the decision was made. This emerged in evidence given to the Oireachtas banking inquiry by Brendan McDonagh, the current chief executive of Nama, the National Asset Management Agency. Mr McDonagh was the NTMA’s director of finance at the time of the guarantee.