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How did they do it? Two years ago, Spanish banks were in crisis, in such bad shape that they put the eurozone at risk and required a lifeline of 41 billion euros, or $52 billion, to stay afloat, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Now, the slimmed-down Spanish banking sector, bolstered by significant provisions against bad mortgage loans and fresh capital injections from private investors, can take comfort in the results of stress tests by the European Central Bank.

Permanent TSB and its advisers plan to canvass more than 30 institutional investors and private equity groups in Europe and the US in the coming weeks to seek an investment of €200 million or more to help plug a shortfall in its capital identified yesterday as part of a pan-European exercise by regulators, the Irish Times reported. Permanent TSB was the only bank in Ireland to fail the European Central Bank’s stress tests. The ECB found a capital shortfall of €854.8 million but PTSB said it has already accounted for more than 80 per cent of this through various actions.

Debt-stricken Danish tanker operator Torm said on Monday it had agreed a deal with group of its lenders and Oaktree Capital Management, a large U.S. investor in distressed debt, to restructure the company, Reuters reported. The Danish company is one of the largest product tanker companies in the world, owning 43 tankers, two dry bulk vessels and operating 53 more vessels. Torm's net interest-bearing debt amounts to $1.4 billion. It ordered a series of new vessels in the years before the global economic downturn and was then hit by collapsing freight rates.

The Irish government and Russia’s A1 are planning to auction a logistics park once owned by former billionaire Sean Quinn, Kommersant reports. A1, part of billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group, will hold public auction on December 5 for sale of Q-Park located in Kazan. The starting price for property, which exceeds 99.500 sq. m, is RU2.575 billion (€40 million). Tenants include Efes, Bosch and Schneider Electric. Mr Quinn, once Ireland’s richest man, was one of biggest foreign investors in Russian commercial property during the Celtic Tiger years before he went bankrupt in January 2012.

The chairman of Dubai’s biggest developer has welcomed a softening in real estate prices in the emirate after two years of hyperbolic growth, the Financial Times reported. In a rare public acknowledgment of the slowdown in the emirate’s property market, Mohammed Alabbar, chairman of Emaar, said he was optimistic about longer-term demand despite a cooling off in market activity. “2013 was crazy as supply was limited,” he said.

Italy’s banking system had the highest number of lenders flunking the European Central Bank’s review of eurozone banks, reflecting the country’s unremitting economic malaise, the International New York Times reported. Italy’s two largest banks, Unicredit and Intesa Sanpaolo, passed the tests comfortably. However, the central bank said that nine of the 15 Italian lenders under the review had capital shortfalls at the end of 2013 and four of them still must raise more capital, including Monte dei Paschi di Siena.

Monarch Airlines has agreed a rescue deal that will result in Switzerland’s Mantegazza dynasty, who started the business with just two aircraft in Luton in 1968, selling up completely, The Telegraph reported. Family patriarch Sergio Mantegazza is understood to have become impatient with the airline’s financial troubles after Monarch asked for a third bailout in July despite already injecting £75m into the business in 2011, just two years after putting £45m into the business.

Some of the strongest ripples from the European Central Bank's landmark stress tests could be felt in eastern Europe as multinational lenders short of capital mull the future of their Balkan operations, while others face extra losses, Reuters reported. The 25 banks that failed the health check included four which own subsidiaries in eastern Europe. Some banks that passed were found to have overvalued their assets in the region by a significant margin, something that will force them to hold more capital and makes them likely to eventually face extra losses.

Indian banks have only two quarters left to restructure stressed assets without significantly dragging down their profits—a fact that’s prompting banks to step up the recast of loans that may eventually need restructuring, Livemint.com reported. Effective 1 April 2015, the Reserve Bank of India’s regulatory forbearance, under which banks were allowed to qualify restructured assets as standard, will come to an end. For now banks are setting aside 5% of the value of the loan to cover the risk of default on any restructured assets.

The finance ministry yesterday handed parties the drafts of three bills concerning the insolvency framework, seen as providing an extra ‘safety net’ to debtors who have fallen on hard times, CyprusMail reported. The framework will be made up of six bills. The ministry has asked party experts to a meeting on October 31 to discuss the drafts, just as the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a verdict on the validity of the foreclosures bill demanded by the troika of international lenders.