The Co-operative Bank has torn up this year’s long-term incentive plan for its senior executives amid expectations that it has failed stress tests mandated by the Bank of England, The Independent reported. The beleaguered bank’s chief executive, Niall Booker, this week confirmed widespread rumours that it was likely to fail the tests, which gauge a lender’s ability to survive a 35 per cent crash in house prices, combined with soaring unemployment and interest rates.

Banks were in the firing line when the British Treasury went looking for revenue to someday balance its budget, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, sought to curb the favorable treatment that banks have received when he delivered the Autumn Statement, Britain’s annual spending plan, on Wednesday. Starting in April, banks will be able to apply only 50 percent of their profits against past losses to calculate their tax bill, rather than all of their profits.

The European Central Bank opened the door to a dramatic escalation in its campaign to stimulate the eurozone’s stagnant economy, but deferred any moves until early 2015 amid signs of continuing divisions over the right course of action, The Wall Street Journal reported. ECB President Mario Draghi said Thursday that officials discussed purchases of government bonds, otherwise known as quantitative easing, a move that would mark a new chapter in the bank’s fight against excessively weak inflation.

British firms hired permanent employees at the slowest rate in 18 months in November, although starting salaries rose faster due to staff shortages in many sectors, a survey showed on Friday. The monthly survey from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation tallies with official data which has shown Britain's rapid pace of job creation slowing, after a sharp fall in the unemployment rate to just 6 percent in the three months to September. "(There's) not much sign of a happy Christmas in the job market," said Bernard Brown, a partner at accountancy firm KPMG, which sponsors the survey.

Multinationals will face a penalty tax if they are found to have artificially moved profits out of the United Kingdom to lower tax jurisdictions, such as the Republic, the British chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne has said, the Irish Times reported. Delivering his autumn statement to the house of commons, Mr Osborne, who is bidding to bring in £5 billion-a-year more from curbing tax avoidance, said he was determined to ensure that multi-nationals “pay their fair share”. “That’s not fair to other British firms. It’s not fair to the British people either.

Berlin has backed the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council’s warning about the dangers of the Government departing from its path of consolidation and reform, the Irish Times reported. In a paper the federal finance ministry said Ireland’s “awareness of its problems and reform courage” were crucial in identifying and tackling its challenges. All the more reason, it added, not to let up now with consolidation. “I would be unrealistic to expect macroeconomic imbalances built up over a long time to be addressed in a short period,” the paper noted.

A Luxembourg court on Wednesday confirmed that a holding company of Portugal's Espirito Santo family could not receive bankruptcy protection, Reuters reported. Rioforte Investments, whose assets include many of the family's holdings in real estate, hotels and plantations, had appealed against an earlier decision by a Luxembourg court to not award it protection from creditors. This appeal was struck down by judges on Wednesday, a spokesman for the court said in an emailed statement, without elaborating.

Dutch sports-car maker Spyker NV said Tuesday it has filed for a financial restructuring in a Dutch court, seeking protection from creditors as it tries to resolve liquidity problems, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a statement, the company said it is seeking financing “arranged by independent financiers” to continue operations and pay wages. “Over the past few years, Spyker has faced a number of serious difficulties and challenges resulting from, among others, the legacy of the F1 era and the acquisition of Saab Automobile AB,” Victor R.

Four months before he aims to become prime minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras is using the example of Germany’s post-World War II debt relief to bolster his case for a writedown on his country’s liabilities toward euro area member states and the European Central Bank, Bloomberg News reported. “While generosity was extended to Germany, Germany refuses to extend the same generosity,” the 40-year-old opposition leader said in a speech in Athens today, referring to a 1953 deal to write off 50 percent of some of Germany’s external debt.

When the European Banking Authority, the European Union banking regulator, recently released an opinion indicating that a number of global banks had wrongly classified some of their complex new bonus structures, perhaps in violation of European law, many of the banks immediately scrambled to reach another regulator — a few blocks away. That regulator, Britain’s Prudential Regulatory Authority, had already approved some of the pay structures, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported.