Just how big is Europe’s “bad bank” sector? On Thursday, Barclays PLC became the latest firm to set one up. The U.K. lender is placing $195 billion of assets into its “non-core” unit. According to calculations, that means the total value of assets at all the state-backed and privately-held bad banks set up in Europe since 2008 has now gone through the $2.5 trillion mark, making them collectively bigger than J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which had a balance sheet of just over $2.4 trillion at the end of last year.

Plans to give HM Revenue and Customs the power to dip into bank accounts to recover unpaid tax will leave people open to fraud and error, a Commons watchdog has warned, The Guardian reported. The Treasury select committee, led by Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, said the current proposals are "very concerning" because people will be at risk of having money wrongly taken out by HMRC. Around 17,000 a year people could be affected by the new tax collection powers, which are expected to raise around £100m a year.

A Swiss former financial adviser to the family of Seán Quinn has strenuously denied being the “mastermind” behind an alleged conspiracy to move €500 million worth of overseas property assets away from the former Anglo Irish Bank. In an interview with the Irish Times, Michael Waechter – the founder of Senat, a United Arab Emirates legal and business advisory firm – said he had co-ordinated some of the Quinn’s legal actions and helped set up Belize and Panama firms for them, but he had at all times acted legally.

Centrica issued its second profits warning in six months yesterday, after admitting 180,000 households had quit its domestic arm British Gas, and the mild winter meant its remaining customers turned their heating down, The Independent reported. The Big Six supplier said it would not raise prices for British Gas customers this year. However, despite admitting that wholesale energy costs had fallen, it made no offer to cut prices.

The European Central Bank on Thursday held interest rates steady, but signaled that it was likely to take action next month to stimulate the euro zone economy, amid growing concern about economic fallout from the crisis in Ukraine, the International New York Times reported. Mario Draghi, the president of the central bank, said Europe would suffer from effects like a decline in the Russian economy, stiffer economic sanctions or higher gas prices. “It’s a very complex geopolitical picture, which could evolve,” Mr. Draghi said at a news conference in Brussels.

Sweden’s central bank sounded the alarm on the Nordic country’s huge household debt burden amid an acrimonious debate on whether it should instead be focusing more on fighting deflation. The Riksbank, the world’s oldest central bank, published a study on Wednesday that it claimed showed debt levels were higher than feared, with the average indebted Swede owing 296 per cent of their annual income while the average mortgage holder owed 370 per cent.

The Czech central bank sees an “increasing” chance of a later exit from its unorthodox policy easing after it lowered its inflation forecast and maintained a cap on koruna gains. Policy makers in Prague left their benchmark interest rate at 0.05 percent today for a 12th meeting, matching the estimates of all 12 analysts in a Bloomberg survey. The bank also reaffirmed a commitment not to let the koruna “strengthen too much” beyond 27 per euro, a limit on the currency pair set on Nov. 7.

Barclays Plc is set to announce plans to cut thousands of jobs and shrink its investment bank as Chief Executive Antony Jenkins tries to get his turnaround plan for the British bank back on track after a bad 10 months. Jenkins, who took the CEO hot seat in August 2012 after investment banker Bob Diamond was ousted following a scandal over the rigging of benchmark interest rates, will lay out a revised strategy for Barclays on Thursday. His original plan to cut jobs and improve profitability, set out to much fanfare less than 15 months ago, needs some significant revisions.

Iceland’s government proposed disbanding the Housing Financing Fund, the nation’s largest mortgage provider, as the lender struggles to make a profit amid loan losses and competition from commercial banks, Bloomberg News reported. The island nation will wind down the operations over the next 30 years and continue to service the lender’s 480 billion kronur ($4.29 billion) in bonds, the government said yesterday in Reykjavik. Legislation to push through the changes will be introduced in parliament this fall, allowing for the suspension of HFF’s current daily operations.

The warning comes after the central bank pressed Greece’s four largest lenders to set up “bad bank” divisions to tackle non-performing loans, which amount to 33 per cent of total lending of about €220bn. However, the banks have so far been reluctant to pull the plug on corporate borrowers unable to meet payments on their debt. “Following such a deep crisis we need strong consolidation [of the economy],” George Provopoulos told the Financial Times.