A planned EU tax on transactions would raise the cost of issuing UK debt by nearly four billion pounds if it were in force this year even though Britain will not impose the levy, a study said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Eleven euro zone countries intend to introduce the tax on stock, bond and derivatives transactions next January to help to make banks pay for aid they received in the financial crisis. There are provisions to ensure the levy is applied no matter where in the world securities from the 11 states are traded.

While the euro zone has been transfixed lately by the Cyprus meltdown, another and potentially bigger European crisis has continued to simmer: record-high unemployment, the International Herald Tribune reported. Spending cuts and tax increases aimed at trimming debt and addressing the financial crises in bailed-out euro zone countries, and the rising rate of joblessness in much of the currency bloc, “are feeding off of each other,” said Mark Cliffe, chief economist at ING Group. “It’s a bit of a vicious circle,” he said.

Greece will extend a deadline for the recapitalisation of its banks by a few weeks, possibly until the end of May, Greek central bank chief George Provopoulos said on Monday. Greek banks, which are being recapitalised with funds from the country's latest EU/IMF bailout, have been lobbying for the terms of the recapitalisation scheme to be sweetened and also sought an extension to an end-April deadline for the plan. "There will be a small extension of a few weeks, it may be pushed to the end of May," Provopoulos told state TV.

For the past 10 years, Charalambos Alexandrou was one of many Cypriots who helped build his country into a modern Mediterranean paradise. But in the last two weeks, he has watched the foundations of his country buckle under a banking collapse. The severe terms of the country’s €10 billion, or $13 billion, international bailout have tied up everyone’s cash, forced huge losses on the biggest savers and are expected to hasten a deep recession that might take years to overcome, the International Herald Tribune reported. Mr.

Banks dealing with people in mortgage arrears will be able to use the minimum income guidelines to be applied by the insolvency service to force distressed mortgage holders to dramatically curtail their spending on essential items such as medical care, it has been claimed, the Irish Times reported. Speaking last night, Fianna Fáil finance spokesman Michael McGrath called for the minimum income guidelines of the Insolvency Service of Ireland (ISI) to be published without delay.

Teldat, a small Spanish designer and maker of internet routers for corporate use, is exactly the kind of company the eurozone needs to foster to recover from the debt crisis. With an annual turnover of €80m and 240 employees, the Madrid-based group sits squarely in the small and medium enterprise sector that policy makers say is critical to creating new jobs, the Financial Times reported. But Teldat and other small companies face disproportionately higher charges than their bigger rivals when they borrow money from banks.

Property developer Sean Dunne has listed several of the country's main banks as creditors in a bankruptcy filing made in the state of Connecticut in the United States, the Irish Times reported. The former property tycoon names State-owned AIB, Bank of Ireland and Ulster Bank among more than 30 creditors listed in the court records filed late on Friday. Mr Dunne estimated his liabilities at between $500 million (€390 million) and $1 billion (€780 million) and his assets at $1 million and $10 million in the court bankruptcy filing.

Italian real estate management company Prelios said on Wednesday it approved a 561 million euro ($717 million) debt restructuring plan, as well as a 185 million euros capital increase, Reuters reported. The heavily indebted company manages properties in Italy and Germany and has been hit hard by writedowns on real estate investments in its recession-hit home market. Prelios said its net loss for 2012 was 241.7 million euros, compared to a loss of 289.6 million euros in 2011, as a result of real estate writedowns and restructuring costs.

Russia's largest banks said Thursday their clients' exposure to losses in Cyprus so far appears modest, while there were few other signs of immediate fallout for Russian business, executives and analysts said, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Kremlin's angry public attacks last week on a planned tax on bank deposits in a tax haven long favored by Russians led many observers to suspect Russians' exposure to Cyprus's troubled banks was substantial. Estimates ran as high as €20 billion ($26 billion) in Russian money said to be at risk.

Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar has said he is sorry for any "contradictory" remarks which may have given the impression that he and Taoiseach Enda Kenny were at odds on proposed insolvency rules relating to working mothers, the Irish Times reported. On Tuesday Mr Varadkar said women in families with excessive debt had a "legitimate" expectation of retaining their careers. But he added that should childcare bills be so excessive they were deemed to have prevented mortgage repayments being made, "well then that's something that needs to be taken into account".