When Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz was asked in Germany this week if the country and its neighbours would suffer a lost decade, his response was unequivocal, the Financial Times reported. “Is Europe going the same way as Japan? Yes,” Mr Stiglitz said in Lindau at a meeting for Nobel Laureates and economics students.

Dutch lender Rabobank said today its net profit slipped 3 per cent to €1.1 billion in the first half of the year, due to charges related to Dutch bank SNS which was bailed out by the government. The outlook for 2014 is uncertain, the bank said in a statement, partly due to the Ukraine crisis and the possible impact on the global economy, the Irish Times reported. Rabobank said its net result in the first six months of 2014 was reduced by a one-time €214 million levy imposed on Dutch banks.

A planned $2bn deal between Rosneft and oil trader Vitol has been shelved, in the latest sign that tougher western sanctions are hampering the Russian state oil group’s ambitions, the Financial Times reported. Vitol, the world’s largest independent oil trader, had been in talks for several months to raise about $2bn from US and European banks to make an advance payment to Rosneft in exchange for future oil supplies. The talks were first reported by the FT in March.

In the decade before Greece's debt crisis, businessman Aristides Belles rode a wave of acquisitions to turn his company, Nireus Aquaculture SA, into one of the largest fish farmers in the world—a staple of supermarket shelves across Europe, The Wall Street Journal reported. Today, Nireus—named after an ancient Greek sea god—is awash in an ocean of debt and has become a parable for the bad loans crippling Greece's corporate sector. Most of the company's big investors have fled, profits and dividends have disappeared and Nireus shares have fallen more than 70% in the past five years.

The European Banking Authority will for the first time publish details of banks’ losses from fines and litigation when it releases the results of European Union- wide stress tests later this year. As many as 12,000 data points per bank will be disclosed, including on their risk weighting of assets, sovereign debt holdings and the structure of capital holdings, the London-based regulator said in a statement on its website today, the Irish Times reported. The EBA will include misconduct-related costs in its assessment of how much capital banks have raised or lost in 2014.

Necessair Consulting, the company controlled by Ten Airways director Catalin Butu that could supply tickets to Fly Romania flights, has asked for its insolvency in the Bucharest Tribunal, Business Review reported. The trial term has been set for September 3rf 2014. Tickets for Fly Romania can no longer be purchased on the website. Two months ago, Fly Romania flights were being cancelled left and right. The number of tickets bought did not match the number of flights according to Fly Romania representatives.

Irish SMEs that borrowed money to invest in property are almost twice as likely to default as similar-sized businesses without property debt, according to new research from the Central Bank. In its report, the bank calculates that 20 per cent of SMEs in the Republic have an exposure of some kind or other to property, the Irish Times reported. These borrowings, many of which stem from loans taken out during the height of the property boom, account for one third of the outstanding bank borrowings of the SME sector.

European banks already have enough information to forge ahead with capital-raising exercises, rather than waiting for the formal publication of the health checks later this year, a leading accountancy said. KPMG said the publication of methodologies for the comprehensive assessment, combined with disclosures from regulators, should be enough to “infer” the impact the exercise will have on banks’ capital levels, the Financial Times reported.

Europe’s banks have done the heavy-lifting in the toughest ever test of their financial strength, but an intensive quality assurance process and decisions still to be taken by supervisors means they cannot work out how they have fared, the Irish Times reported.

Ukraine has asked Switzerland for help in recovering assets moved to the Alpine country by members of ousted leader Viktor Yanukovych's inner circle, according to a Swiss official, The Wall Street Journal reported. Since the start of the summer, Switzerland's justice department has received three requests for assistance in repatriating the assets, spokesman Folco Galli said. The requests concern funds linked to the 19 members of Mr. Yanukovych's entourage, rather than to the former Ukrainian leader himself, Mr. Galli said.