Three former managers blamed for the crisis that has befallen the world’s oldest bank, and devastated the community whose economy depended on it, were sentenced on Friday to jail time and banned from public office for five years, the International New York Times reported. The executives of the bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, were accused of hiding a convoluted derivatives contract that helped it conceal its losses.

On October 29th the World Bank released its annual “Doing Business” report, ranking 189 economies by how attractive they are to firms. That Singapore led the list again this year, with Eritrea stuck in last place, was less surprising than the fact that Ukraine leapt up the rankings, The Economist reported. This was in part due to improvements to its tax-collection system, introduced before its conflict with Russia flared up. The World Bank’s indicators seek to cover many aspects of a country’s business climate, but not the risk of invasion by a belligerent neighbour.

Austria’s nationalized lender Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International AG said Thursday it has split itself between a wind-down unit, called Heta Asset Resolution GmbH, and its southeastern European network of banks, The Wall Street Journal reported. The split is part of the lender’s restructuring plan approved by the European Commission. Under the plan, the Austrian government—Hypo Alpe-Adria’s current owner—must sell off all of the bank’s assets or transfer them into a wind-down unit by mid-2015. Hypo Alpe-Adria was nationalized in 2009 after overextending itself in southeastern Europe.

Now that Greece has said it will seek a credit line from the eurozone’s bailout fund once its rescue program runs out at the end of the year, the difficult negotiations on how to make the new aid palatable to both Athens and other European capitals have begun, The Wall Street Journal Real Time Brussels blog reported. The Greek government is looking at early elections next spring if Prime Minister Antonis Samaras fails to find a supermajority (in other words add an extra 25 lawmakers to his 155-delegate-strong coalition) to back a new president by March.

Britain's banks will be forced to maintain significant financial safety nets under rules announced on Friday that industry leaders say could raise the cost of mortgages and penalise building societies, The Telegraph reported. The Bank of England is expected to go beyond global standards in revealing the leverage ratio – the level of financial reserves banks must hold to protect against a downturn – it expects banks to adopt.

Led by Europe’s five biggest economies, 51 nations on Wednesday signed what Germany’s finance minister hailed as a milestone in the fight against tax evasion — an agreement that commits them all to automatic exchange of tax information starting in 2017, the International New York Times reported. The accord will end banking secrecy as it has been known for decades, the finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, told Germany’s Bild newspaper before the deal. It was an apparent bid by Mr.

Six specialist judges appointed to speed up thousands of insolvency actions - earning salaries of €140,623 a year - are "frustrated" because they have so little work to do, Independent.ie reported. The dedicated cadre of judges were appointed in July 2013 to deal with an anticipated avalanche of debt cases, following what former Justice Minister Alan Shatter described as a "seismic shift" brought in by the 2012 Personal Insolvency Act.

The rate of companies being liquidated has fallen to its lowest level since records started in 1984, Insolvency Service figures show, The Guardian reported. In the 12 months to September, one in 186 active companies, or 0.54%, went into liquidation in England and Wales, in a continuation of a downward trend since 2011. Experts welcomed the business insolvency figures as another sign that the economy is “firmly in recovery mode” but they also warned that firms will face growing pains as economic improvement continues and interest rates start to climb.

The European Union said no nation has broken EU budget rules by a big enough margin to warrant immediate action, a move that gives France and Italy more time to win approval for their draft spending plans, Bloomberg News reported. “After taking into account all of the further information and improvements communicated to us in recent days, I cannot immediately identify cases of particularly serious non-compliance which would oblige us to consider a negative opinion at this stage in the process,” European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen said in a statement.

Italy’s Treasury has not ruled out extending repayment deadlines on hundreds of millions of euros in state aid to help troubled lender Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena as it struggles to raise fresh capital, according to sources, the Irish Times reported. Officials said Monte dei Paschi chairman Alessandro Profumo and chief executive Fabrizio Viola had held meetings in the economy ministry today to seek options for the bank, after it failed European Central Bank stress tests.