Headlines

For six months Heinrich Traublinger did not manage to fill a vacancy at his bakery near Munich. For about the same length of time, Daniel Henares was looking for work after being laid off from the tyre factory where he worked near Barcelona. Now Mr Henares has begun a new life as a German baker in what amounts to a small step towards solving one of the continent’s most glaring imbalances.

Inspectors from Portugal's bailout creditors are returning to Lisbon to assess whether the government's latest austerity measures merit unblocking a due disbursement of rescue funds, the Associated Press reported. Portugal's 78 billion euro ($102 billion) bailout two years ago spared the country from bankruptcy, but in return it must slash spending and debt. In what was seen as a warning over lack of compliance, the bailout lenders last month halted payouts after Portugal's Constitutional Court disallowed some of the government's pay and pension cuts.

Some of Canada’s mid-sized cities are flourishing – but not all: Almost half of them have not recouped the jobs they lost during the recession, The Globe and Mail reported. New analysis by the Conference Board of Canada finds that 21 of the 46 medium-sized cities it tracks haven’t yet seen employment return to pre-recession levels. Most of these cities had been bustling up until the 2008-2009 recession. But the ensuing downturn caused economies to contract in 29 of the cities tracked.

The inadequacy of off-plan sales was supposed to be one of the lessons developers and regulators learned from the crisis, which sent real estate prices tumbling by more than half in some parts of Dubai. Such sales were problematic because customers paid up before projects were built. When the market turned sour and developers slowed down or scaled back, many investors had trouble getting their money back, The Wall Street Journal Middle East Real Time blog reported.

The High Court has ordered the winding up of developer John McCabe’s main trading company in the Republic following a petition from a creditor that has been pursuing the business for eight months, the Irish Times reported. Following a petition from MCR Personnel, the court ordered that McCabe Builders Ltd be wound up and appointed Kieran Wallace of KPMG as liquidator. Last autumn, the National Asset Management Agency appointed Jim Hamilton and David O’Connor of BDO as receivers over the company’s properties, in effect giving them control over it.

Greece's crisis-ravaged economy is beginning to turn the corner in its sixth year of recession, while the country's efforts to mend its public finances could allow it to return to financial markets as early as next year, the country's finance minister said. In weekend newspaper interviews, Yannis Stournaras said "The worst is over" for Greece, The Wall Street Journal reported. He added that the country has pushed through two-thirds of the overhaul measures needed to narrow chronic gaps in the government budget.

Brussels is increasing efforts to clamp down on tax avoidance by wealthy investors, including private equity partners and hedge funds, by forcing all 27 EU members to share confidential information on individuals’ investment income and capital gains for the first time, the Financial Times reported.

Liquidators for Scottish Coal, KPMG, said on Friday they were in talks regarding the possible sale of parts of the business, Reuters reported. The company ran out of cash last month, putting 600 jobs at risk and closing mines that are major suppliers to Britain's power stations. "Over the last few days we have been in discussion with a variety of parties who have expressed an interest in the business or more precisely certain parts of it," accountancy firm KPMG said. No names were disclosed.

Ireland has resolved a standoff with international lenders over the timing of so-called "stress tests" of its bailed-out banks that threatened to cloud its exit from an EU-IMF rescue deal at the end of the year, four sources close to the matter said, the Irish Times reported. The government has agreed the tests - aimed at gauging banks' resilience to economic shocks - could take place ahead of a Europe-wide exercise, in line with the European Union and International Monetary Fund's desire for the banks to be checked before the end of Ireland's sovereign bailout deal in December.

Banks in Singapore are urgently scrutinising their account holders as an imminent deadline on stricter tax evasion measures forces them to decide whether to send some of their wealthiest clients packing. The Southeast Asian city-state has grown into the world's fourth-biggest offshore financial centre but, with U.S. and European regulators on the hunt for tax cheats, the government is clamping down to forestall the kind of onslaught from foreign authorities that is now hitting Switzerland's banks.