A panel of dealers determined in an auction Monday that holders of Greek credit-default swaps would be paid 78.5 cents on the dollar after Greece's giant debt restructuring, a smooth result in line with expectations for a large payout to swapholders, The Wall Street Journal reported. Credit-default swaps, or CDS, are insurance-like contracts designed to pay off if creditors suffer losses. The auction's outcome means that sellers of the $3.2 billion in outstanding swaps will pay $2.5 billion in compensation to buyers.

Consumers expect their finances to get worse in the coming year but are slightly more willing to spend money on major purchases as worries about job security are easing, a survey showed on Monday, Reuters reported. Markit's headline Household Finance Index dipped to 37.8 in March from February's 14-month high of 38.7, and well below the 50 level which would mark an improvement in Britons' finances.

A group of financial-market players on Monday will determine that holders of $3.2 billion in Greek credit-default swaps will receive around $2.5 billion in compensation for Greece's debt restructuring—a payout that mirrors the loss that creditors suffered, The Wall Street Journal reported. But the happy outcome owes much to mere chance. It masks flaws in the contracts, say some market participants and legal experts, that have rattled investors and are leading to calls to revamp how the swaps are handled for defaulting sovereign nations.

Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti will press ahead with efforts to revise labor laws this week, amid fresh warnings that the three-year-old European debt crisis is far from over, Bloomberg reported. Monti will lead talks with unions and employers in a final round of negotiations beginning Monday. Decision makers meanwhile warned against complacency after delivery of the final element of Greece’s 130 billion-euro ($171 billion) bailout package and the completion of the world’s largest sovereign-debt restructuring last week.

Insolvent German drugstore chain Schlecker aims to find an investor by the end of May, its administrator told a German magazine, Reuters reported. "If everything goes according to plan, we can be done with the investor process by the Pentecost holiday," Arndt Geiwitz told weekly Wirtschafts Woche, according to an excerpt of an article to be published on Monday. Unlisted Schlecker, which competes with privately held peers Rossmann and dm, filed for insolvency in January after struggling to secure funds against a gloomy economic backdrop.

Europe's low interest rates are fueling rising house prices in Germany, presenting the region's policy makers with a fresh challenge in their fight to restore its economic health, The Wall Street Journal reported. Signs of a property-price boom in parts of Germany are becoming a headache for the European Central Bank, which has for the past two years struggled to fashion a single stance on interest rates and support for banks that fits countries as disparate as depressed Greece and mighty Germany.

Chancellor George Osborne will use a 28 billion pound ($44.36 billion) asset transfer from taking on the Royal Mail's pension fund to pay down government debt next year, a government source said on Sunday, Reuters reported.

Despite the European Central Bank's massive injections of cash since December to help the euro-zone's banking sector avoid a liquidity crisis, there are scant indications that the money has started trickling down to companies and households on the periphery of the monetary union, analysts and economists say. The result is a lending squeeze in countries such as Portugal and Spain that could lead to a number of bankruptcies, even-higher unemployment and a deeper economic contraction that will make any recovery difficult, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Spanish house prices tumbled at their fastest pace on record in the fourth quarter, a sign that a long-running property bust will continue to weigh on Spanish households and banks, The Wall Street Journal reported. House prices fell on average by 11.2% in the fourth quarter from the same period a year earlier, well below the 7.4% decline in the third quarter, while prices of used homes was down 13.7% in the period, the country's statistics agency INE said Thursday.

The chairman of NAMA says it can avoid making a loss over its lifetime, but admits there is little chance of recovering the face value of loans held by the agency, Independent.ie reported. Frank Daly yesterday said he was confident NAMA would recover the €31bn it paid banks for property loans, plus the cost of running the agency, over its 10-year lifetime. Mr Daly and NAMA chief executive Brendan McDonagh were addressing a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform.