EU’s financial aid, Sean Dunne’s London address and our economic paradox

Euro zone finance ministers negotiated late into the night on Tuesday in a marathon effort to thrash out a recovery plan to save the continent from the profound economic damage of the coronavirus pandemic.

Closer to homes, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) raised €6 billion in its largest bond sale in over a decade on Tuesday. The funds will help finance the State's response to the coronavirus crisis, which is expected to result in a budget deficit of nearly €20 billion this year.

A total of ¤34 billion has been wiped off the value of Iseq 20 companies over the past three months as the Covid-19 pandemic spooked investors in global equities, writes Peter Hamilton.

More than four out of five people in the global workforce are currently affected by full or partial workplace closures arising to the Covid-19 outbreak, according to a new study from the UN's International Labour Organisation. Charlie Taylor reports.

Facing economic meltdown ... and nothing wrong with our economy

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EU finance ministers hold marathon talks to overcome eurobonds split

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MCD’s Desmond ‘optimistic’ that Electric Picnic 2020 will go ahead

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Cold water poured on idea of ‘helicopter money’

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Meanwhile, Irish banks have set up dedicated telephone lines for customers currently cocooning, to help older and vulnerable customers required to stay at home during the coronavirus crisis. Laura Slattery reports.

In his column this week, Eoin Burke-Kennedy assesses what he describes as the peculiar paradox at the core of this crisis. "Though we are confronting an economic meltdown there is nothing essentially wrong with the economy."

Court papers filed last week in Sean Dunne's US bankruptcy case list his address in May 2019, around the time his US civil trial began, as a luxurious home near London. Mr Dunne stayed at the property for a few weeks in the spring of 2019 and has not lived there since, sources have told The Irish Times.

The latest list of the world's billionaires by Forbes includes several Irish names, most notablytech entrepreneur brothers Patrick and John Collison, holding positions ahead of the club's longer-established Irish members such as Denis O'Brien and Dermot Desmond.

In commercial property, Ronald Quinlan reports on the purchase of 166 apartments being developed by Marlet Property Group in Harold's Cross, Dublin by a German fund. He also has a story on how the Rye River Brewing Company has secured €3.33 million from the sale of its headquarters and production facility in Celbridge, Co Kildare.