Staff at Independent Newspapers will have their pension benefit almost halved under management proposals to address a €155 million funding shortfall, the Irish Times reported. The plan is part of a dramatic ongoing restructuring of the business over recent months. Management say its success depends on workers realising the “weakness of their legal position” and a possible alternative scenario that could see the “failure” of the group.

A judge in Rome has ordered trial for seven former officials in the bankruptcy of Alitalia several years ago when it was still a state-run airline, the Associated Press reported. The present Alitalia began flying in 2009 as a new company owned by a group of Italian investors. The airline's 62 years as a state-run company ended in bankruptcy in 2008. Consumer advocate group Codacons said Tuesday's indictments will allow shareholders of the old Alitalia to seek damages as part of the trial set to begin on June 18.

Reyal Urbis SA, a real-estate firm that became a stock-market darling before Spain's property boom went bust, said it would file for bankruptcy protection in what could become the second-largest default in Spanish corporate history, The Wall Street Journal reported. The firm, born of the merger of Inmobiliaria Urbis and Construcciones Reyal a year before the real estate crash of 2008, said in a statement Tuesday that it expects to reach an agreement with its creditors.

European banks are facing the threat of having to reveal their taxes and profits on a country-by-country basis in the latest twist to the EU negotiations over rules to make banks safer, the Financial Times reported. The European parliament is pressing for the tougher disclosure regime along with a demand for strict curbs on bankers’ bonuses as part of the law implementing the Basel III international accord.

The European Union will seek to broker a tentative compromise on curbs of banker bonuses as diplomats and lawmakers attempt to overcome eight months of conflict on how to apply Basel rules to the bloc’s lenders, the Irish Times reported. The Republic will draft revised proposals on bonuses ahead of today’s negotiation meeting, according to two EU officials not authorised to be cited by name. Governments have accepted that any deal on the Basel law will need to contain binding pay rules if it is to win European Parliament approval, said the officials.

Bulgaria's finance minister stepped down on Monday after tens of thousands of people took to the streets over the weekend to protest electricity prices, raising pressure on the government, which until recently had managed to retain its popularity despite an austerity drive, The Wall Street Journal reported. Simeon Djankov, a former World Bank official who won the respect of financial markets for undertaking painful reforms but courted controversy in Bulgaria as a fiscal hawk, said he was resigning as finance minister, effective Sunday. Mr.

The involvement of the Irish Central Bank in the promissory deal is "problematic", Germany's Bundesbank said in its monthly report Monday, the Irish Times reported. The German central bank highlighted what it described as "the increasingly stronger and more problematic inter-linkage between monetary and fiscal policy in the European monetary union". "The European Stability Mechanism, which should be responsible in this regard, has been established to provide any help to individual member states in servicing debt," it said.

It has taken four rotating European Union presidencies, the current draft law runs to more than 1,000 pages, and European Council experts have a special suitcase to carry the document from meeting to meeting. But now, more than 1½ years after the original proposal from the European Commission, EU officials believe member states and the European Parliament may finally be close to a deal on new capital requirements for banks in the 27-country bloc, The Wall Street Journal Real Time Brussels blog reported.

German banks' use of European Central Bank crisis funding dropped by a third in January from the previous month, a further sign that banks in the heart of the euro zone are returning to money markets after last year's credit squeeze. Banks in countries on the periphery of the 17-member bloc still rely on central bank lending, which, while at a record-low interest rate of 0.75 percent, is above market rates. The divergence complicates the ECB's interest rate-setting plans.

Small retail clients who invested in Spain's nationalised Bankia face substantial losses, with the bank's shares temporarily suspended on the Madrid stock exchange on Thursday morning amid rumours that existing stock would be declared almost worthless, The Guardian reported. The Frob, the country's bank restructuring fund, was forced to admit that the price it will set for swapping debt into shares at the bailed-out bank would be low – but denied reports that it would value shares at just 1 euro cent each.