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.

Troubled steelmaker Lucchini said on Tuesday it planned to ask India's JSW Steel to raise its offer of less than $100 million for the Italian company's core assets in Piombino on the Tuscan coast, Reuters reported. Lucchini, Italy's second-largest steel plant by capacity, was previously owned by Russia's Severstal, but it was declared insolvent in 2012 and placed under special administration. JSW so far has made the only binding offer.

The Italian economy is struggling to emerge from a prolonged recession and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi needs now to firmly push through his bold reform agenda to address Italy's structural weaknesses and unleash the country's growth potential while continuing to reduce its huge debt load, the International Monetary Fund said Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported. In its annual staff report completed at the end of August after bilateral consultations with Rome, the IMF forecast a 0.1% drop in Italy's gross domestic product in 2014, highlighting the challenges that Mr.

Italy is pushing for new rules to monitor economic reforms across the eurozone, in an attempt to reassure other European countries of its commitment to tackling its biggest structural problems and rally them towards greater flexibility on budgetary policy. Pier Carlo Padoan, Italy’s finance minister, told the Financial Times that “benchmarks” to measure and compare structural reforms would be both “disciplining” and “confidence building”. “This would be extremely useful for Europe and for Italy,” Mr Padoan said.

An Italian court has upheld a ruling by a U.S. court for Italy's Parmalat to pay Citibank $431 million in damages in a case relating to the dairy group's bankruptcy more than 10 years ago, lawyers for the U.S. bank said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Parmalat collapsed in 2003 after the discovery of a 14 billion euro ($18 billion) hole in its accounts. At the time it was Europe's biggest bankruptcy and its demise wiped out the savings of more than 100,000 small investors.

Italy fell back into recession for the third time since 2008, data showed today, building up pressure on Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to accelerate the pace of economic reforms while keeping the country's accounts in order, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. Gross domestic product in the euro zone's third-largest economy dropped 0.2 percent in the second quarter of 2014 from the previous three months, national statistics institute Istat said today, citing preliminary data.

Creditor banks of Alitalia have reached agreement on how to share the burden of a debt restructuring for the Italian airline, UniCredit Chief Executive's Federico Ghizzoni said on Monday, Reuters reported. The green light from the banks, together with an agreement between Alitalia and the unions on job cuts, are key factors for the airline to seal the final terms of a rescue deal with Abu Dhabi's Etihad.

ArcelorMittal is looking into making an offer for Italy’s second biggest steel producer Lucchini, and a proposal is expected to be made later in July, GantDaily.com reported. Lucchini was placed under “special administration” after it was declared insolvent in 2012. The procedure aimed to save huge companies and avoid heavy job losses. The company, formerly owned by Russia’s Severstal, was badly hit by the 2008 recession that has reduced Europe’s steel demand by around 25 percent.