Banks shouldn’t count on a fresh round of European Central Bank cash to trade sovereign debt and reap big profits, Mario Draghi said, Bloomberg News reported. “The convenience to use the ECB cheap money to buy government bonds is much less” than in a previous funding round which started in 2011, the ECB president said in testimony to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France yesterday.

When the Insolvency Service of Ireland (ISI) came into being over a year ago, the then minister for justice, Alan Shatter, said it was the “light at the end of the tunnel” for tens of thousands of distressed borrowers who were no longer able to service their debts as a result of years of reckless borrowing and reckless lending, coupled with the worst recession in the history of the State, the Irish Times reported in an analysis.

Spanish wireless networks provider Gowex filed for bankruptcy on Monday, a week after an accounting fraud at the firm was revealed, while the High Court said its founder could face a jail sentence of more than 10 years. Law firm Velez & Urbina said Gowex had decided to file for bankruptcy because it was in a state of "imminent insolvency" and faced a "financial standstill" after a high number of contracts were ended and new projects were canceled.

Greece has beaten its target for its primary budget surplus for the first six months of the year, data from the Finance Ministry showed Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a statement, the ministry said the primary budget surplus, which doesn't take into account interest payments, reached €712 million ($969.9 million), compared with a €1.5 billion deficit during the first half of 2014. The figure surpassed the government's target of a €635 million deficit. "The fiscal targets are being reached for a third consecutive year," said Deputy Finance Minister Christos Staikouras.

Creditor banks of Alitalia have reached agreement on how to share the burden of a debt restructuring for the Italian airline, UniCredit Chief Executive's Federico Ghizzoni said on Monday, Reuters reported. The green light from the banks, together with an agreement between Alitalia and the unions on job cuts, are key factors for the airline to seal the final terms of a rescue deal with Abu Dhabi's Etihad.

Just 124 deals on debt were done under the auspices of the Insolvency Service of Ireland (ISI) in the second quarter of 2014 according to figures published today, the Irish Times reported. The State agency set up last year to help distressed borrowers admitted the number was low, but it insisted the rate of pick-up was increasing as people became more familiar with the options open to them. However critics have said that low number of applications being successfully processed proves that the agency has been a “failure”.

One of Bulgaria’s biggest banks faces bankruptcy proceedings after the country’s central bank reported that documentation covering the bulk of its loan portfolio was missing, while sacks of cash containing millions of lev had been removed from its vaults, the Financial Times reported. Ivan Iskrov, the central bank governor, said on Friday the banking licence of Corporate Commercial Bank was being revoked, while its healthy assets and liabilities would be transferred to Crédit Agricole Bulgaria, a Corpbank subsidiary that will be nationalised.

Mario Draghi’s newest stimulus tool will hand banks more than 700 billion euros ($950 billion) of cheap funding, economists say, Bloomberg News reported. The European Central Bank president’s targeted lending program for banks will boost credit for the real economy as planned, and at the same time help keep the financial system flush with cash, according to the Bloomberg Monthly Survey of 45 economists. Draghi may address the topic today when he testifies at the European Parliament in Strasbourg for the first time since elections in May.

The London High Court is convening a meeting of creditors of Russia’s aluminum giant RUSAL to vote on a scheme of arrangement of restructuring the company’s $5.15 billion debt, RUSAL said in a statement on Friday. RUSAL, which is the world’s largest aluminum producer, has earlier applied to the London and Jersey courts for the first time in Russia’s corporate history for debt restructuring after failing to win unanimous support from its creditors, the ITAR-TASS News Agency reported. The date of holding the creditors’ meeting was not specified in the statement.

Investors received a jolt on Thursday when shares of Portugal’s second-largest bank, Banco Espírito Santo, were suspended from trading, prompting fears that the bank might need to be rescued, the International New York Times reported. The move sent high-flying stocks and bonds in Portugal plummeting, forced two Spanish companies to suspend bond offerings and brought concerns over the health of Europe’s banking system. As markets from Germany to Greece wobbled, the tumult was a reminder to investors as to how quickly bad news can spread in the euro zone.