Headlines

Scottish business insolvencies have remained at an all-time low rate of just 0.03 per cent for five months in succession, a report out today discloses, Scotsman.com reported. Meanwhile, the UK insolvency rate has now stayed at 0.08 per cent for a whole quarter – February to April – for the first time since 2007. Analysts said the survey, from global information services group Experian, indicated that despite Britain’s subdued economic picture the trading environment was becoming more stable and there was greater resistance to business failure.

Spain's central bank called for a suspension of the minimum wage in selected cases, saying a year-old overhaul of labor laws had made the economy more competitive but failed to encourage hiring, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Bank of Spain's recommendation, though not binding on the conservative government, reflects growing concern among policy makers about the country's 27% unemployment rate.

Central bank forum the Bank for International Settlements laid out a blueprint on Sunday for how to recapitalise a major lender in the event of a failure, seeking to avoid the sort of chaotic ad hoc rescues seen since 2008's financial crash, Reuters reported. Authorities have been grappling since the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers five years ago with the question of how banks regarded as systemically important - or too big to fail (TBTF) - can be recapitalised without causing panic and without needing taxpayer cash.

The Co-operative is weighing a rescue plan for its banking subsidiary that could impose losses on the unit’s junior bondholders to bolster its capital levels, the Financial Times reported. The UK funeral-to-supermarkets group is working through its options with advisers UBS and Allen & Overy to fill in a deficit in regulatory capital at its banking division, which Barclays analysts have estimated at between £800m and £1.8bn.

The Slovenian economy continued to shrink in the first quarter this year as the small euro-zone nation battled slumping demand for its exports of cars, pharmaceuticals and household appliances, caused by the ongoing economic downturn in Europe’s common currency bloc, The Wall Street Journal Emerging Europe blog reported. First-quarter gross domestic product contracted 3.3% from the final three months of last year, and slipped 0.7% on the year, the national statistics bureau said Friday.

A unit of the Swiss bank UBS has been placed under formal investigation in France following allegations that it designed investments to help its clients evade taxes, the International Herald Tribune reported. The move comes more than a year after an inquiry was opened regarding the bank’s operations in France, a UBS executive briefed on the matter said Sunday. A handful of UBS executives have been put under investigation since the inquiry began in 2012.

An Irish property developer, Eugene O’Neill, who came to prominence after he backed out of a deal to sell apartments in Dublin during the height of the property boom, has been bankrupted in Britain, following a petition lodged by a subsidiary of the Zurich insurance company, the Irish Times reported. The bankruptcy order was made against Mr O’Neill, who gave an address in Ealing in West London, and lately of Osbertown Lodge, Osbertown, Co Kildare, on the petition of Dunbar Assets Ireland, based in the Irish Financial Services Centre.

Deep disagreements among 11 European Union states that have pledged to introduce a tax on financial transactions mean the proposal faces delays and could be significantly scaled back, EU diplomats involved in the discussions said on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Portuguese government confirmed Thursday that it will impose spending ceilings on all ministries, cut public-private partnership contracts and increase working hours in the public sector to save on overtime pay to meet a budget-deficit target of 5.5% of gross domestic product this year, The Wall Street Journal reported. "Like we have promised, there won't be [new] tax increases," government spokesman Luis Marques Guedes said following a meeting where ministers approved changes to the original budget plan for 2013. Mr.

Switzerland is not a member of the 27-nation European Union and it has its own currency, pegged to the euro. It has escaped the worst of a crisis that has affected countries of the euro zone and charted its own course during the Continent’s economic downturn, the International Herald Tribune Rendezvous blog reported. Despite some public resistance to budget cuts, it has also avoided the sort of harsh austerity measures that the European Union authorities have imposed on member states fighting to reduce their mountains of debt.