Germany, France and Italy urged European Union regulators to speed up and widen curbs on tax-lowering deals for companies, saying that the EU should adopt rules by the end of next year, Bloomberg News reported today. Measures should go beyond greater transparency and company registries to a “general principle of effective taxation” to stem the EU’s lack of “tax harmonization” that entices companies to cherry-pick where they pay, according to a joint letter by finance ministers Wolfgang Schaeuble, Michel Sapin and Pier Carlo Padoan to the EU Commission.

The first balance sheet of Portugal's Novo Banco, the successor to Banco Espirito Santo following a state rescue in August, will show solvency ratios above the required threshold and no need for additional capital, its chief executive said, Reuters reported. Eduardo Stock da Cunha told reporters on Thursday the bank's deposits were recovering after a drop in the wake of the rescue that split BES into the working Novo Banco and a "bad bank" exposed to liabilities of its founding Espirito Santo family.

Sputnik Engineering, the parent company of Swiss inverter manufacturer Solarmax, will file for insolvency in Switzerland this week PV Tech has learned. In a circular sent to customers and seen by PV Tech, the company said it had looked for alternatives but to no avail. “The employees have been informed this morning and will stop working today until further notice,” it said in the statement. The company is not the first European manufacturer to struggle as the domestic market declined and competition increased.

Thousands of workers, students and pensioners marched through central Athens Thursday as part of a 24-hour nationwide general strike called by the country’s two biggest unions to protest against the government’s austerity program, The Wall Street Journal reported. The protesters, who filed through the city’s main square and past parliament, called on the two-party coalition government to end the austerity measures that pushed the economy into a deep recession, shrank output by roughly 30% and left more than a quarter of the workforce without jobs.

The Central Bank of Ireland has proposed a raft of new regulations for credit unions, covering a number of areas including reserves, liquidity, lending, investments, controls, and reporting requirements, the Irish Times reported. The draft regulations are designed to ensure that “appropriate limits and requirements” are in place for the credit union sector. Under the new rules, the maximum amount that somebody can save with a credit union will be limited to €100,000, half the level currently in place.

OW Tanker, a unit of bankrupt OW Bunker and owner of its marine fuel supply ships, has been taken over by a newly-created company, the fleet manager told Reuters on Wednesday. OW Bunker, the largest ship fuel supplier in the world, collapsed earlier this month after it said it had lost almost $300 million in hedging losses and unauthorised credit lines given in Singapore. Henrik Pedersen said the takeover by Alba Tanker ApS, which has the trustees of the bankrupt company on its board, is part of the process of securing assets for the estate.

The property developer Vincent Tchenguiz has filed a $3.5 billion claim in London against the accounting firm Grant Thornton, the Icelandic bank Kaupthing and three individuals, claiming they were behind a flawed criminal inquiry into the bank’s collapse, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. The Serious Fraud Office of Britain dropped its inquiry against Mr.

Italy's second-largest steelmaker Lucchini will ask the Italian government for permission to sell its Piombino complex to family-owned Algerian conglomerate Cevital, the company said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Lucchini was previously owned by Russia's Severstal but was declared insolvent in 2012 and placed into special administration, battered by slowing demand following the 2008-2009 financial crisis and stiff competition from Asia. The company received two offers for its core assets in Piombino, one from Cevital and the other from India's JSW Steel .

The European Union authorities are set to unveil a long-awaited investment plan on Wednesday with the ambition of channeling 315 billion euros into public infrastructure projects like transportation, communications and energy over the next three years, the International New York Times reported. The plan, worth the equivalent of $393 billion if it reaches its target, is meant to spur growth among the 28 nations in the bloc, in response to concerns that Europe is tumbling into a lost decade of low growth and high unemployment.

Germany’s central bank has warned that corporate debt is becoming overpriced and threatens the financial stability of Europe’s biggest economy, the Financial Times reported. The comments from the Bundesbank come as the European Central Bank considers buying corporate bonds to expand its balance sheet and stave off the threat of economic stagnation in the eurozone.