Banks, Europe Debt | featured news

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 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.

Over the course of five days, the Greek government -- led by the understated conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras -- overcame two high hurdles in a dash to qualify for the austerity program set out by the so-called troika, made up of the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission.

European leaders reached a "breakthrough" deal early Friday to ease the recapitalization of struggling banks that should help draw the eurozone back from the brink of a gathering crisis. Under the deal, European leaders agreed to create a single supervisory body to oversee the eurozone's banks which could use the single currency area's rescue funds, the European Financial Stability Facility or European Stability Mechanism, to aid banks directly without adding to governments' debt.

Spain's government said Friday it plans to make its official request for EU aid for its banking sector Monday, as discussions continue on ways to inject European aid funds directly into ailing Spanish banks.