The purchase of three major Irish businesses over the past two years by the billionaire businessman Denis O’Brien involved total bank write-offs of more than €300 million, the Irish Times reported. The deals saw the businessman invest €230 million to acquire the Siteserv Group, the Topaz Group and the Beacon Private Hospital. The Siteserv deal saw the State-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, which is now in liquidation, write off €110 million of the €150 million it was owed.

Portugal has taken the unusual step of sacrificing a €2.6bn loan payment to avoid being rushed into drawing up alternatives to budget measures overturned by the country’s constitutional court, the Financial Times reported. Lisbon’s official lenders had set a deadline of June 30 for the government to devise other ways of saving an estimated €500m-€800m this year to offset the budget cuts that the court ruled to have breached the constitution.

British finance minister George Osborne said on Thursday that he would give the Bank of England stronger powers to curb mortgage lending and reduce the risks that the housing market poses to financial stability, Reuters reported. British house prices have risen by 11 percent over the past year and are close to pre-crisis levels. The International Monetary Fund urged Britain last week to take steps to cool the housing market and reduce the risk of a bubble. Osborne said the housing market was not an immediate threat to Britain's financial stability but could become one in future.

Ireland's recovery is under way, but its fragile lenders and the large amounts of debt held by households pose considerable threats to stability, the Irish central bank said Thursday, in a report aimed at identifying the substantial risks faced by the country, The Wall Street Journal reported. Marking significant milestones, the country exited its three-year international bailout in December and has regained full access to government debt markets, at historically low yields.

The world must act to contain the risk of another devastating housing crash, the International Monetary Fund warned on Wednesday, as it published new data showing house prices are well above their historical average in many countries, the Financial Times reported. The warning from the IMF shows how an acceleration in global house prices from already high levels has emerged as one of the major threats to economic stability, with countries making limited progress in keeping them under control.

The next governor of Greece’s central bank will be Yannis Stournaras, a Greek economist and former finance minister who led a two-year austerity drive that stabilized the economy but fueled a social crisis, the International New York Times reported. The announcement on Wednesday, by the General Council of the Bank of Greece, followed a sweeping cabinet shuffle on Monday that installed Gikas Hardouvelis, another economist and former government adviser, as Greece’s new finance minister.

British coal producer Hargreaves Services has withdrawn a loan offer to rival miner UK Coal saying it could not agree to a loan plan with other parties discussing the managed shutdown of UK Coal, Reuters reported. UK Coal, Britain's largest coal producer, went into administration last year and its business has since deteriorated further due to competition from cheaper coal producing markets and the strength of the pound because it is paid in dollars. Hargreaves Services had been in discussions to provide UK Coal with a 5 million pound ($8.4 million) loan.

The group of Pescanova’s creditor banks known as G7 intends to start express insolvency this week in the Spanish Galician multinational firm’s subsidiaries, FIS reported. Sources close to the bank said it is necessary to carry out this process "soon," the newspaper Faro de Vigo reported. For the banks, the documentation is "almost ready" for all the Spanish subsidiaries – except for Insuiña SL and Sémolas del Noroeste SA (HASENOSA) – to be declared as undergoing creditors’ meeting.

In a highly controversial move, the Justice Ministry of Latvia has scrapped former Justice Minister Janis Bordans' submitted reforms to straighten out the insolvency administrator system in Latvia, LETA was informed by Justice Ministry Parliamentary Secretary Gaidis Berzins (VL-TB/LNNK), The Baltic Course reported. Berzins added that these reforms will be put forward in a different bill in the near future. Asked whether in such a way All for Latvia!-For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK is not attempting to delay these reforms, Berzins denied this.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s government can’t impose a cap aimed at reining in state salaries on Bank of Italy officials’ pay as that would compromise the independence of the institution, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said, Bloomberg News reported. “Member states may not seek to influence the members of the national central banks’ decision-making bodies by amending national legislation affecting their remuneration,” said a May 26 opinion of the ECB Governing Council signed by Draghi, a fomer Bank of Italy governor.