Former chairman and chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank Seán FitzPatrick appeared in court Tuesday in connection with alleged financial irregularities at the bank, the Irish Times reported. The court heard Mr FitzPatrick was arrested by arrangement at Dublin Airport at about 5.35am by gardaí attached to the Office of the Director Corporate Enforcement and taken to the Bridewell Garda station. He is understood to have been returning to Ireland on a flight from the US at the time of his arrest.

Authorities in Ireland arrested and indicted two former executives of Anglo Irish Bank Corp. for allegedly encouraging a huge share-support plan, marking the first charges to be brought in an investigation of the lender that was central to the country's banking crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Greece is in a "Great Depression" similar to the American one in the 1930s, the country's prime minister Antonis Samaras has told former US president Bill Clinton, the Irish Times reported. Mr Samaras was speaking before a team of Greece's international lenders arrive in Athens to push for further cuts needed for the debt-laden country to qualify for further rescue payments and avoid a chaotic default.

The problems facing Spanish and Italian banks are no longer purely ones of liquidity but of capital, the Financial Times reported. Locked out, in effect, of public debt markets as spiralling sovereign borrowing costs have hit bank bonds and sapped appetite among investors for their debt, financial institutions in Spain and Italy have become increasingly reliant on the European Central Bank for funding. Spanish and Italian lenders accounted for the biggest chunk of the €1tn borrowed from the ECB under its three-year, longer-term refinancing operations in December and February.

Concerns that Spain won't be able to meet its funding needs helped to spark a global selloff in financial markets Friday, as the government warned the country's economic contraction would drag into next year, and one of its most indebted regional administrations asked the central government for help refinancing its debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. The market slump underscored fears that Spain's finances are spiraling out of control and could require the country to seek a full rescue from the European Union.

Tiny Murcia was on course on Sunday to be the second Spanish region to request help from the central government to keep it afloat, as media reported half a dozen local authorities were ready to follow in the footsteps of Valencia, Reuters reported. How Spain's 17 indebted autonomous regions, locked out of international debt markets, refinance 36 billion euros in debt this year has been a major source of concern for investors ever since they missed deficit targets last year. Spain's central government set up an 18 billion euro ($22 billion) fund earlier this month to ease their funding pain.

As Prime Minister Mario Monti fights to protect Italy from the contagion driving up its borrowing costs to perilous levels, one region in particular has been in the spotlight: Sicily, which some fear has become “the Greece of Italy” and is at risk of defaulting on its high public debts, the International Herald Tribune reported. Mr.

The International Monetary Fund's mission chief for Greece, Poul Thomsen, walked grim-faced into his first meeting with newly elected Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on July 5 wearing a black tie looking as if he was going to a funeral. Whether he was making a point or not, the first meet-and-greet visit by Greece's exasperated international lenders with the new government was blunt, both sides told Reuters.

German lawmakers on Thursday resoundingly backed the latest European rescue, a package of loans from the euro-zone bailout fund to prop up weakened Spanish banks, handing Chancellor Angela Merkel a victory as doubts about the euro rise in Germany, The Wall Street Journal reported. The vote did little to reassure jittery financial markets about Madrid’s economic recovery or its ability to repair its beleaguered banks.

France wants the euro zone to move quickly on its latest steps toward integration in the currency union, French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported. "Our agenda is strong and it will be fast," he said in a brief interview. Mr. Moscovici, who met with officials Thursday in Washington, said last month's European summit marked "huge progress" in addressing the euro zone's troubles. "We made our first steps toward integration—a banking union, fiscal union, budgetary union and further on political union," he said.