The European Union’s banking watchdog has warned that Bulgaria’s authorities have breached European law by continuing to block depositors’ access to their money at a large troubled lender the government seized four months ago, the International New York Times reported. The warning comes after a run on deposits forced the lender, Corporate Commercial Bank, to close in June, leaving tens of thousands of consumers and businesses without access to their cash in the European Union’s poorest member state.

HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) Chairman Douglas Flint said separating his bank’s securities arm from its consumer unit may cost as much as 2 billion pounds ($3.2 billion), Bloomberg News reported. “Ringfencing will cost one billion, two billion to implement, which is a structural separation that is going to be very expensive,” Flint told the House of Lords’s European Union Economic and Financial Affairs Subcommittee in London today. British lenders must build firewalls between their consumer and investment banks by 2019 to meet rules proposed by John Vickers’s Independent Commission on Banking.

Two businessmen in dispute with AIB over more than €6 million in property debts say the bank forged their signatures on loan documents, the High Court heard yesterday, the Irish Times reported. Earlier this year, State-controlled AIB appointed EY as receivers to properties in Ireland and Britain belonging to businessmen Brendan McCleary and Brendan Hamilton on foot of a series of loans the bank claims are overdue.

Portugal's Novo Banco -- the successor to bailed-out Banco Espirito Santo (BES) -- has moved closer to a rescue deal for its Angolan unit, with the African nation's central bank agreeing a recapitalisation plan for the local business, Reuters reported. Novo Banco will retain a 9.9 percent stake in BES Angola (BESA) under a deal which will see some of its loans to the unit converted into equity, the National Bank of Angola said on Monday.

The European Union’s banking watchdog said Bulgaria’s central bank and deposit insurance fund were breaching the bloc’s deposit-guarantee law by not allowing depositors to access their savings at Bulgaria’s Corporate Commercial Bank, The Wall Street Journal reported.

German exports tumbled 5.8 per cent in August compared with July – the biggest drop since the peak of the global financial crisis in January 2009. The economy now risks slipping into recession in the third quarter, and the government has already lowered its growth forecasts for 2014 and 2015, the Financial Times reported. Those developments are unsettling a Germany corporate sector that has been a robust counterweight to the gloom in much of Europe ever since it staged a rapid recovery from the 2009 crisis, thanks to booming emerging market demand for machinery, chemicals and autos.

Six years after Iceland’s banks defaulted on $85 billion in debt and brought the Atlantic island’s economy to its knees, Islandsbanki hf is seeking to sell shares to international investors, Bloomberg News reported. The island’s second-largest bank, formed from the remnants of failed Glitnir Bank hf, wants to sell shares to investors in a Scandinavian capital or London, the Reykjavik-based bank’s Chief Financial Officer Jon Omarsson said in an Oct. 16 interview in Stockholm.

A court in Luxembourg has denied a creditor-protection request from the main holding companies of the Espírito Santo empire, paving the way for a liquidation of all its assets, The Wall Street Journal reported. Espírito Santo International SA and Rioforte Investments SA filed the request in July after they were unable to meet debt obligations. Espírito Santo International, whose main unit is Rioforte, was found to be in serious financial trouble earlier this year following an audit ordered by the Bank of Portugal. The audit also found accounting irregularities at the holding company.

The European Central Bank’s investigation of the eurozone’s largest lenders is raising further concerns over the future of German publicly owned Landesbank HSH Nordbank, as its bloated shipping portfolio comes under intense scrutiny, the Financial Times reported. Germany’s largest shipping lenders, including HSH Nordbank, NordLB and Commerzbank, will see their shipping assets written down by between 10-20 per cent in the ECB’s stress tests, according to bankers familiar with the investigations.

Pilots of German carrier Deutsche Lufthansa AG will go on strike again Monday and Tuesday in their continuing dispute over retirement benefits, The Wall Street Journal reported. The pilots union, Vereinigung Cockpit, said in a statement the strike will start at 11:00 GMT on Monday and would end at 21:59 GMT on Tuesday, and would affect Lufthansa’s Airbus 320 family, Boeing 737 and Embraer planes. Lufthansa said about 1,450 flights will be canceled on Monday and Tuesday because of the strikes. More than 200,000 customers will be affected by the walkout, the company added.