Bloomberg An agreement between Italian officials and bank executives to create a multibillion-euro fund to offload bad loans is a step in the right direction, say analysts, but the pact may not be enough to reassure investors that the pain for Italy’s troubled banking sector is over. Banks, insurers and institutional investors agreed to create a vehicle named Atlante ...

  Bloomberg The Bank of England will take responsibility for a U.K. benchmark measure of overnight funding rates as officials seek to prevent a recurrence of the rigging scandals since the global financial crisis. The BOE will provide oversight and governance for the Sterling Overnight Index Average, or Sonia, from April 25, it said in a statement released Wednesday. The ...

  Bloomberg The business of trading stocks has claimed another scalp this year. Nomura is shuttering its equities division in Europe, hot on the heels of Barclays’ pullback from Asian equities. The Japanese bank hadn’t cracked the top 10 list in Europe, and Barclays had failed to do the same in Asia. They won’t be the last to scale back ...