Italy

Stricken Italian Serie A side Parma were officially declared bankrupt on Thursday, a day after their chairman Giampietro Manenti was arrested in a money-laundering probe, Reuters reported. Parma's players have not been paid all season and it took just 10 minutes for a court to declare the club, rooted to the bottom of the league after finishing sixth last season, bankrupt. They have twice been docked points this season and are more than 100 million euros ($106.65 million) in debt. The court in Parma appointed accountants Angelo Anedda and Alberto Guiotto as receivers.

Italy’s latest effort to address its chronic tax evasion problem is keeping Tancredi Marino very busy. The Milan-based tax lawyer is hiring extra attorneys to handle dozens of requests from Italians looking to use an imminent amnesty to bring back money stashed in Switzerland and Monaco, The Wall Street Journal reported. But Mr.

Italian unemployment unexpectedly rose to a record high that’s more than double the German rate, keeping alive concerns about the diverging growth outlook in the euro area, Bloomberg News reported. The jobless rate increased to 13.4 percent from a revised 13.3 percent in October, while separate data showed the euro-region rate at 11.5 percent. The reports contrast with data from Germany showing unemployment there fell to the lowest in more than two decades last month.

Italy's second-largest steelmaker Lucchini will ask the Italian government for permission to sell its Piombino complex to family-owned Algerian conglomerate Cevital, the company said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Lucchini was previously owned by Russia's Severstal but was declared insolvent in 2012 and placed into special administration, battered by slowing demand following the 2008-2009 financial crisis and stiff competition from Asia. The company received two offers for its core assets in Piombino, one from Cevital and the other from India's JSW Steel .

Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Europe’s oldest bank and one of its most troubled, on Wednesday reported a loss of 797 million euros, or $991 million, in the third quarter after it drastically increased the amount of money set aside to cover problem loans, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. The loss comes as Monte dei Paschi, which is based in Italy, is struggling to make up a capital shortfall exposed by the European Central Bank as part of a bank cleanup.

Three former managers blamed for the crisis that has befallen the world’s oldest bank, and devastated the community whose economy depended on it, were sentenced on Friday to jail time and banned from public office for five years, the International New York Times reported. The executives of the bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, were accused of hiding a convoluted derivatives contract that helped it conceal its losses.

Italy’s Treasury has not ruled out extending repayment deadlines on hundreds of millions of euros in state aid to help troubled lender Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena as it struggles to raise fresh capital, according to sources, the Irish Times reported. Officials said Monte dei Paschi chairman Alessandro Profumo and chief executive Fabrizio Viola had held meetings in the economy ministry today to seek options for the bank, after it failed European Central Bank stress tests.

Italy and France backed away from a clash with the European Commission over their 2015 budgets on Monday by pledging extra measures to cut their deficits, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move comes after the commission, the European Union’s executive arm, warned Rome and Paris last week that their budget plans would violate its fiscal rules.

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.

The trickle of toxic debt being sold by Italian banks is turning into a torrent as UniCredit prepares to announce the disposal of more than €5 billion in bad loans to private equity investors, the Irish Times reported. UK group AnaCap Financial Partners has bought a €1.9 billion portfolio of non-performing loans to Italian small- and medium-sized companies for a significant discount to their face value.