It has been billed by the British government as “a turning point” in the battle against tax evasion and avoidance. When world leaders gather in Northern Ireland next week, they will set out to end tax havens and stem the illicit flow of funds out of some of the world’s poorest countries, the Financial Times reported. The agenda – focused on the ‘three Ts” of trade, tax and transparency – is both technically and politically challenging.

Britain will give its strongest indication yet that it is ready to return part-nationalised Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland to private ownership later this month, political and industry sources said, Reuters reported. Chancellor George Osborne will signal the time is right to offload the government's 81 percent shareholding in RBS and a 39 percent stake in Lloyds in his annual Mansion House speech to financiers on June 19, the sources said on Monday. The government pumped a combined 66 billion pounds into the banks to keep them afloat during the 2008 financial crisis.

Greek business is awakening from a coma; the long-forgotten sound of drills and hammers can be heard on Athens construction sites again while customers queue calmly at banks to deposit cash rather than to withdraw it in panic, Reuters reported. Nevertheless, the government's declaration that an economic recovery is underway seems premature, with the hard numbers signalling stagnation rather than the robust growth needed to meet ambitious debt targets and reduce towering unemployment.

Greece’s privatisation programme suffered a severe setback when Gazprom failed to bid for Depa, the state-controlled natural gas supplier, as a deadline for binding offers expired on Monday, while only one offer was received for Desfa, which operates the country’s gas distribution network, the Financial Times reported. Gazprom, the only bidder, had been expected to offer about €800m for a controlling stake in Depa following months of negotiations with the Greek government on the terms of sale, said a person with knowledge of the process.

Ireland was given a “back-door bailout” worth around £10 billion (€11.5 billion) by Britain in “an arrangement that was never explicitly approved by parliament”, according to a report today, the Irish Times reported. The London Times claims Ulster Bank has accounted for about a quarter of losses since 2008 at the state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland, which is 81 per cent owned by British taxpayers after a £45 billion state bailout five years ago.

Ireland, Greece and Portugal are labouring under debt-to-income ratios of more than 300%, according to figures that expose the indebtedness of eurozone governments in relation to their government revenues, The Guardian reported. The measure, intended to show governments' abilities to pay debts, shows Ireland's total debt in 2012 was €192bn (£163.1bn), or 340% of the government's income. Ireland came a narrow second in the table to fellow bail-out recipient Greece, which has amassed an even worse debt-to-revenue total of 351%.

French state holding company FSI said it was confident of a positive outcome to debt restructuring talks at Saur, the water and waste treatment company in which it is the leading shareholder. Saur, burdened by 1.8 billion euros ($2.3 billion) of debt, is trying to negotiate a restructuring with its lenders and shareholders before June 30, after which the firm risks being put under a court-sanctioned reorganisation scheme. "Important progress has been made in the past few days. We expect a positive outcome for these talks," FSI Chief Executive Jean-Yves Gilet told Reuters.

Tensions are likely to rise between Labour and the Finance Minister Michael Noonan over his refusal to consider ending VAT of 23 per cent on those who use the Government's new insolvency service, Independent.ie reported. In particular, a concern is growing within Labour over the double standards being applied to the collection of VAT in Irish and UK personal insolvency plans. Under Alan Shatter's current legislation those availing of the embattled minister's insolvency regime will have to pay 23 per cent VAT on top of fees charged by the Personal Insolvency Practitioner.

The European Commission on Thursday rejected the International Monetary Fund’s view that lenders mishandled the first Greek bailout in 2010 by allowing Athens to delay a debt restructuring to 2012, The Globe and Mail reported. The Commission – which together with the IMF and the European Central Bank forms the troika that prepared the bailouts of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus – said tackling a restructuring in 2010 would have been wrong. “The (IMF) report argues that an upfront debt restructuring in 2010 would have been desirable.

Arguments continue in Europe over whether governments should relax budgets to encourage growth. But some analysts argue this debate is drawing attention from something more important that is generating serious headwinds for the region's economies: Europe's broken financial sector, The Wall Street Journal Brussels Beat blog reported. António Borges, a former European director of the International Monetary Fund who is now at the Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, says arguing about austerity misses the point.