Headlines

The debt written off by Europe’s companies due to late payment or non-payment of bills has swelled to €360bn despite the pick-up in economic activity in the region, the Financial Times reported. “The late payment consequences for businesses pose a real threat to Europe’s competitiveness and social wellbeing,” said Lars Wollung, president of Intrum Justitia, a credit management group.

The war on those stashing undisclosed money offshore intensified this week when 47 countries, including the Group of 20 and some prominent tax havens, sealed a pact that will shake up the sharing of tax information, The Economist reported. Under the present system, countries have to file requests with each other for data on suspected cheats. Even reasonable enquiries are often rejected as “fishing expeditions”. In future the signatories—and dozens of others that will be pressed into joining later—will automatically exchange information once a year.

Finnish Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen was ousted as Social Democratic leader yesterday as her party turned to a trade union leader advocating more stimulus to promote growth in the northernmost euro member, Bloomberg News reported. Antti Rinne, head of the trade union Pro, won the backing of 257 party members against Urpilainen’s 243 at a congress yesterday in Seinaejoki, northwest of Helsinki. Urpilainen said she will step down as finance minister and leave the government. “Social democrats in Finland and in Europe must again target full employment,” Rinne, 51, said in a speech today.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said the nation needs to adapt to a “new normal” in the pace of economic growth and remain “cool-minded” amid a slowdown that analysts forecast will lead to the weakest expansion since 1990. China’s growth fundamentals haven’t changed and the country is still in a “significant period of strategic opportunity,” Xi said, according to a Xinhua News Agency report on the central government website on May 10. At the same time, the government must prevent risks and take “timely countermeasures to reduce potential negative effects,” he said.

Permanent TSB has in recent days invited corporate advisers to pitch to sell two of its loan books with a face value of €2.5 billion. It has invited tenders from accounting firms and corporate advisers to sell its €2.1 billion Irish commercial real estate (CRE) book and its €465 million Springboard Mortgages subprime portfolio, the Irish Times reported. In March, State-owned Permanent TSB said its strategy was to sell the two businesses either this year or in early 2015.

Britain's Co-operative Bank said on Saturday it had completed a 400 million pound ($674 million) fundraising to bolster its capital position, Reuters reported. The capital raise, which was launched on Friday, is subject to shareholder approval at a general meeting that will be held in due course, the bank said in a statement.

After decades of building a global investment bank, Barclays is sounding a retreat, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. The British bank announced on Thursday plans to take an ax to its investment banking business — which has major operations in New York as well as London and Asia — by slashing half of its capital and more than a quarter of its work force, or 7,000 jobs. Instead, Barclays will focus on four core areas: retail and corporate banking, primarily in Britain; credit cards; banking in Africa; and, to a lesser extent, investment banking.

Just how big is Europe’s “bad bank” sector? On Thursday, Barclays PLC became the latest firm to set one up. The U.K. lender is placing $195 billion of assets into its “non-core” unit. According to calculations, that means the total value of assets at all the state-backed and privately-held bad banks set up in Europe since 2008 has now gone through the $2.5 trillion mark, making them collectively bigger than J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which had a balance sheet of just over $2.4 trillion at the end of last year.

Plans to give HM Revenue and Customs the power to dip into bank accounts to recover unpaid tax will leave people open to fraud and error, a Commons watchdog has warned, The Guardian reported. The Treasury select committee, led by Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, said the current proposals are "very concerning" because people will be at risk of having money wrongly taken out by HMRC. Around 17,000 a year people could be affected by the new tax collection powers, which are expected to raise around £100m a year.

A Swiss former financial adviser to the family of Seán Quinn has strenuously denied being the “mastermind” behind an alleged conspiracy to move €500 million worth of overseas property assets away from the former Anglo Irish Bank. In an interview with the Irish Times, Michael Waechter – the founder of Senat, a United Arab Emirates legal and business advisory firm – said he had co-ordinated some of the Quinn’s legal actions and helped set up Belize and Panama firms for them, but he had at all times acted legally.