Athens has “annoyed” and “frustrated” its eurozone partners with combative negotiating tactics, said Belgium’s finance minister, who warned Greece that the single currency could safely ride out its exit, the Financial Times reported. Johan Van Overtveldt, an economist who took charge of the finance ministry in the eurozone’s sixth-largest economy in October, said the currency bloc had sufficient safeguards in place to endure a Greek departure, adding he believed other ministers shared this view.

Banco de Madrid, a small Spanish bank, filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday after a United States government report last week accused its parent company in Andorra of laundering money on behalf of organized crime groups in China and Russia, as well as for government officials in Venezuela, the International New York Times reported. The bankruptcy filing was aimed at stopping the flight of deposits from the bank after the accusations against its parent, Banca Privada d’Andorra, known as BPA.

The most senior bankers running the UK operations of non-European banks are being brought under a tough new accountability regime but have been spared the ultimate penalty of jail time, the UK’s financial regulator said on Monday. The Prudential Regulation Authority announced details of how senior executives of banks outside the European Economic Area would be captured by their Approved Persons’ Regime, which was unveiled on February 23 and comes into force in March 2016, the Financial Times reported.

Ukraine has warned debtholders including Russia that they should prepare to lose money as the war-ravaged country seeks to stave off a default, the Financial Times reported. Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine’s finance minister, made the comments to investors as Kiev seeks to restructure its government debt following a $17.5bn loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund. Ms Jaresko said the country’s debt operation, which targets more than $15bn of debt, “will probably involve a combination of maturity extensions, coupon reductions and principal reductions”.

Just four months after assuming its new powers, the ECB faces an acute test of its credibility in the shape of the latest Greek crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported. The success of the banking union hinges on the ECB convincing markets that it offers a decisive break with a European past in which national authorities were seen as too susceptible to political pressure, too willing to overlook weak bank balance sheets to shield government balance sheets.

Germany's deposit protection fund is planning to take over the property lender Duesseldorfer Hypothekenbank AG (DuesselHyp), which has run into problems due to its exposure to Austrian lender Hypo Alpe Adria's "bad bank" Heta, Reuters reported. The German banking association BdB, which runs the fund, is, however, not planning to wind down the bank, but wants to continue its operations. "The deposit protection fund is granting a guarantee for the Heta bonds to eliminate the immediate risks. The goal is a complete takeover of Duesseldorfer Hypothekenbank," the BdB said in a statement on Sunday.

The International Monetary Fund’s bailout of Ukraine is based on a fragile cease-fire holding between Kiev and Russia-backed separatists in the east, IMF officials said Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The IMF’s assumption of a “non-intensification” of the conflict just a day after U.S. officials said militants had already violated the deal underscores the frailty of the bailout program.

TSB Banking Group, the lender spun out of Lloyds Banking Group last year, said on Thursday that it had received a preliminary takeover offer from Banco Sabadell of Spain, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. The deal, if completed, would greatly expand Sabadell’s presence in Britain, where it primarily offers business accounts and banking services to Spanish companies. Under the terms of the offer, Sabadell would pay 3.40 pounds in cash for each share of TSB, valuing the company at £1.7 billion, or about $2.6 billion, TSB said.

The German and Dutch central bank presidents, two of the eurozone’s toughest hawks, have warned that monetary easing would allow France, Italy and other economically vulnerable countries to shirk unpopular reforms, the Financial Times reported. Jens Weidmann of the Bundesbank and Klaas Knot, head of De Nederlandsche Bank, delivered their broadsides just days after Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank chief, launched quantitative easing, a huge €1.1tn bond-buying programme designed to boost flagging economic growth.

The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday approved a bigger, high-risk bailout for Ukraine, giving Kiev immediate access to $5 billion of $17.5 billion in emergency IMF credit in another bid to keep the embattled country afloat, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ukraine’s deadly conflict with Russia-backed militants in eastern Ukraine forced the fund to revamp its bailout program as the turmoil pushed the economy into a deep, two-year contraction, fueled a currency free fall, sparked rampant inflation and drained the central bank’s reserves.