Banks, Europe | featured news

Luxembourg says it will exchange information with the rest of Europe to help fight tax evasion. The initiative, which is to start in 2015, follows international pressure on Luxembourg to end its policy of banking secrecy that critics say has helped people hide money from tax authorities. Luxembourg, a tiny country of half a million people, boasts a huge financial industry with more than 3 trillion euros ($4 trillion) in assets.

Some key data about bond purchases by Bank of Cyprus - now the focus of a controversial EU-IMF bailout - is missing, investigators have found. The gaps were found in computer records studied by a financial consultancy, Alvarez and Marsal, Cypriot media say.

Successive Slovenian governments have refused to privatize the country's banks, which made disastrous loans to politically connected business interests and now threaten to drag the country center stage in the euro zone debt crisis.

Michalis Sarris resigned after announcing the final terms of a bailout for the nation’s banking system that imposed heavy losses on bank depositors in return for aid.

Cyprus has imposed limits on money transfers and hired extra security guards to prepare for the reopening of its banks, which have been shut for almost two weeks to avoid a run during the country's financial drama.

Antreas Artemis, the chairman of Bank of Cyprus, contended that he and the bank's board were not consulted in bailout negotiations that would impose large losses on depositors.

The Central Bank of Cyprus says the country's finance minister has decided to order all banks in the country to remain shut until Thursday.

The European Central Bank is prepared to cut off funding to Cyprus and let the Mediterranean island succumb to financial meltdown if it has to, confident it has unlimited firepower to protect the rest of the euro zone.

Europe has spent hundreds of billions of euros rescuing its banks but may have lost an entire generation of young people in the process, the president of the European Parliament said.

The European Central Bank has left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at a record low of 0.75 percent, holding off on further stimulus even though the euro area remains stuck in recession.