Despite the European accord last month to extend a financial lifeline to Greece, Athens is rapidly running out of cash, the International New York Times reported. So it is scrambling to find new, even radical ways to fill the shortfall — including a proposal to recruit citizens and tourists to spy on suspected tax evaders. Greece’s coffers may be empty before the end of this month, as tax receipts shrink and the economy shows signs of lapsing back into recession.

The liquidation of IBRC has created a surplus which is likely to be enough to pay off all the unsecured creditors, an update to be published by the liquidators shortly will reveal. This is good news for the exchequer, as it means it will recoup the €1.1 billion paid to depositors on foot of State guarantees, the Irish Times reported. However it also now looks certain that cash will be left to pay off the €270 million owed to junior bondholders of the former Anglo Irish Bank, who would receive their money back after ordinary unsecured creditors are paid in full.

Russia’s inflation rate has accelerated to levels last seen in 2002, leaving the central bank with a policy conundrum as the economy slides into a recession, The Wall Street Journal reported. Hit by a rapid drop in the price of oil, Russia’s chief export, the country faces an economic and financial crisis similar to the one endured in 2009. But unlike six years ago, the country has been cut off from global capital markets because of Western sanctions imposed after Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.

The European Central Bank will begin its big new stimulus program on Monday, the bank’s president, Mario Draghi, said. He predicted improvements in the economy and in the eurozone’s inflation picture as a result of the effort, the International New York Times reported. The starting date, announced on Thursday, was one of many details the financial markets had been awaiting since the central bank announced in January that it would embark on a program of large-scale asset purchases intended to fix the collapse in consumer prices.

Europe’s biggest economy needs people who think small. German business is booming and employment stands at a record high. But the surge is driven mainly by decades-old companies. Startups are scarce and getting rarer. That worries policy makers. In a sign of how seriously the government takes the country’s dearth of entrepreneurialism, left-leaning Social Democrat Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel is pushing to expand tax breaks for startups and trying to ease their path to the stock market. Mr.

Banco Espirito Santo (BES) breached the Bank of Portugal's orders by increasing exposure to its founding family's collapsing businesses in the months before the state rescued the bank last August, a forensic audit report showed. The central bank, worried about the financial state of the family empire's holding ESI, had told BES in late 2013 not to increase exposure to the Espirito Santo Group and not to pass any of the group's debt on to BES' retail clients.

Tecnotree, a small Finnish firm that offers IT services to telecom operators, on Thursday said it will apply for debt restructuring due to its prolonged financial problems and delayed payments from projects in Latin America. "Significant part of the company's customers operate in countries where central banks restrict the availability of currency, for which reason the payments to the company are delayed," it said in a statement. The company's biggest customer groups are American Movil in Latin America and MTN Group in Africa.

Ukraine pledged to remove heavy weapons from conflict-hit eastern areas as public finances ruined by the war made it necessary to start restructuring public debt, Bloomberg News reported. The truce agreed in Minsk last month has largely held, with some shelling by pro-Russian rebels still reported, Ukrainian military officials said Wednesday. Kiev City Council gave the government a mandate to restructure $550 million of its debt as the sovereign prepares to negotiate with bond holders alongside a $17.5 billion International Monetary Fund loan.

In a world of negative interest rates, it certainly pays to be a borrower, Shakespeare’s concerns notwithstanding, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. But such a world is a strange place, especially for a restructuring lawyer. Up is down, and lenders might benefit from defaults. This is something of a theoretical exercise at this point. European sovereign nations have issued debt with negative returns, with Austria being the most recent. Some European corporations have gone negative in the market, but the issuer does not benefit from that.

A number of current and former media executives will appear before the Oireachtas Banking Inquiry later this month as it continues its investigation into the collapse of the financial sector here in late 2008 and its subsequent rescue by the State, the Irish Times reported. This module of the inquiry will focus on the role of media during the property boom in the lead up to the banking crisis between 2002 and 2007 and any changes in approach after the crisis.