The Espirito Santo Group (GES), whose collapse led to a state rescue of Portugal's second-largest bank in August, was a financially fragile "house of cards" for years and its chief knew of irregularities there, a former GES shareholder said, Reuters reported. Pedro Queiroz Pereira, chairman of conglomerate Semapa, told a parliament committee he had ordered a team of experts to scrutinise GES accounts after its chief and the Espirito Santo family patriarch Ricardo Salgado tried to sell debt of GES holding companies to Semapa and even win control of Semapa.

Greece is again the word in financial markets. For now, though, the crisis vocabulary doesn’t include Ireland, Portugal, Spain or Italy. Greece Crisis 2.0, coming five years after it sent the first shockwaves through Europe, may prove less infectious this time thanks to nations’ improved finances and the backstops provided by euro area politicians and central bankers, Bloomberg News reported.

Lawmakers gave initial approval Thursday to a government program containing the outline for an economic overhaul aimed at stabilizing the country’s finances, as Western backers prepare a new aid package, The Wall Street Journal reported. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk had raised the risk of possible default in calling on parliament to support the measures, although his finance minister played down the likelihood of that scenario.

Iceland’s government signaled this week that it is closing in on a plan that would unfreeze the assets of three failed banks for creditors owed tens of billions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported. At a meeting Tuesday, a government lawyer told some creditors that Iceland would propose a plan early next year to restructure the debt of Kaupthing Bank hf, Glitnir Bank hf and Landsbanki, according to people familiar with the talks.

Moving to battle high unemployment and a stagnant economy, the Socialist government of President François Hollande on Wednesday announced a long-promised program meant to stoke growth and create jobs, the International New York Times reported. The measures, including allowing more retail stores to open on Sundays, fall far short of what some experts say is needed to revive the stagnant French economy. Nonetheless, important members of Mr.

Germany's Yi-Ko Holding, formerly the biggest operator of Burger King restaurants in the country, has filed for insolvency, Yi-Ko's lawyers said, putting 3,000 jobs at risk. Burger King had told Yi-Ko three weeks ago to shut down its 89 restaurants across Germany immediately, saying the franchisee had violated its rules on the treatment of employees. The move did not affect the remaining 599 Burger King restaurants in Germany.

The European Central Bank on Thursday will again offer banks a chance to get cheap long-term loans, but a disappointing uptake could put it under more pressure to help kickstart the moribund economy, FMT.com reported. By pumping more liquidity into the financial system, the Frankfurt-based central bank aims to boost the eurozone economy via private-sector loans and, in turn, halt a stubborn drop in inflation. The ECB unveiled a lending programme called the Targeted Long-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTRO) in June, announcing eight rounds of borrowing to banks until 2016.

Business groups warned Britain’s government on Wednesday that it risked undermining international efforts to rewrite tax rules after officials published plans to target multinational companies, including Google, that use complex strategies to cut their British tax bills, the International New York Times reported. Details of a new measure, which has become known as the “Google tax,” were released on Wednesday, a week after George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, promised a crackdown on tax-avoidance strategies.

Greek financial markets plummeted on Tuesday as investors took fright at the premier's decision to hold a no-confidence vote in his administration fuelling fresh political instability and fears of the radical Syriza party taking power, The Independent reported. The Athens share index fell by almost 13 per cent, the biggest single-day drop since 1987 and a heftier decline than any registered in the recent years of financial crisis in the Mediterranean country. Yesterday has already been named “Black Tuesday”.

More than 23,000 defaulting mortgage holders are facing the prospect of legal action to repossess their homes and investment properties as banks step up efforts to confront the arrears backlog, the Irish Times reported. New figures from the Central Bank suggest that banks had proposed solutions for 93 per cent of arrears cases by the end of September, exceeding their year-end target to propose solutions in 85 per cent of cases. In almost half of those cases, however, the proposed solution involves loss of ownership.