Switzerland, the world’s largest offshore financial centre, has pledged automatically to hand the details of foreign bank accounts to other countries in one of the most significant breakthroughs in the global crackdown on evasion, the Financial Times reported. At a ministerial meeting in Paris on Tuesday, Switzerland agreed to sign up to a new global standard on automatic information exchange, representing a decisive break with its centuries-old commitment to protecting the privacy of banking clients.

The Republic will not support a fresh legal challenge by the United Kingdom to the European Union’s proposed financial transactions tax, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said yesterday, as 10 EU countries preliminarily agreed to introduce a new tax on share transactions by 2016 and civil groups in Ireland condemned Ireland for not signing up to the measure, the Irish Times reported. Mr Noonan was speaking after Sweden said it would potentially support the UK if it brought a second case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over the plan.

Europe’s climb out of its debt crisis has been narrated by a long debate on whether the austerity imposed on countries that needed international bailouts would bring more pain than relief. Portugal’s move to exit its bailout gives new ammunition to the austerity advocates who have called for shredding European-style social safety nets that in many countries no longer seem affordable, the International New York Times reported in an analysis.

Russian companies shut out of Western markets as a result of the Ukraine crisis are scouting the possibility of raising cash via Chinese or Singapore bonds instead, even if a large scale funding switch to Asia is likely to be a tall order, Reuters reported. Asian investors, eyeing the risks associated with Western sanctions, could prove a hard sell. Usually prolific borrowers, Russian firms' bond and loan issuance this year has languished as lenders fear getting caught up in U.S.

The euro zone's bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, could directly invest in a troubled bank next year, after 8 percent of the bank's total liabilities are written off, the chairman of euro zone finance ministers said on Monday, Reuters reported. The bloc's leaders agreed in 2012 that the ESM must have the option of directly buying a stake in a troubled bank to break the "doom loop" that binds indebted governments to the unstable banks they are trying to prop up.

Portugal on Sunday announced its exit from a three-year bailout program that has forced deep spending cuts and set off mass protests — but has also helped the country clean up its public finances and return to the bond markets after halving its budget deficit, the International New York Times reported. Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho said that Portugal had built up sufficient financial reserves to end the program on schedule and without requesting any additional line of credit from its European counterparts.

The Co-operative group’s stake could fall to about a fifth from 30 per cent as it sells share options to avoid injecting more cash, the Express reported. The group has admitted it will have to go to lenders if it wants to put in another £120million needed to keep the stake at 30 per cent. It is believed to be a better option than selling all its rights and would avoid the possibility of the stake falling below 20 per cent which would remove any effective control over the bank.

The district court at Itzehoe in northern Germany said insolvency proceedings had begun with regard to the Prokon's renewable energy division. Other segments of the firm's business were not facing bankruptcy, Deutsche Welle reported. The court said the company's regenerative energy business faced claims of 391 million euros ($542 million), compared with liquid funds of just 19 million euros. Insolvency administrator Dietmar Penzlin had indicated investors still had a chance of seeing at least some of their money back.

Pescanova SA is said to have won backing from a majority of creditors to restructure its debt a year after the Spanish fishing company entered bankruptcy protection, Bloomberg News reported. More than 60 percent of creditors voted in favor of the plan, which would hand control of the company to its biggest lenders, according to two people familiar with the results. At least 50 percent of creditors had to back the restructuring proposal. The operator of 90 ships as well as fish farms and processing plants from Spain to Chile needed to reach a deal with lenders by April 30 to avoid liquidation.

Codere SA gained more time to negotiate a 1.1 billion-euro ($1.5 billion) debt restructuring deal and avoid seeking full creditor protection, Bloomberg News reported. The Spanish gaming company’s lenders and a majority of bondholders agreed to continue talks for 10 days, Madrid-based Codere said in a statement. It had until today to reach an agreement or start insolvency proceedings after seeking preliminary creditor protection on Jan. 2.