Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the eurozone crisis. By Tom Burgis and Esther Bintliff on the news desk in London with contributions from our correspondents around the world. All times are GMT. Another big day for "Super" Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank president. We'll learn how much banks have borrowed from the ECB's liquidity programme designed to help ease the eurozone's woes. We'll be watching too for ripples from the Irish decision to hold a referendum on the eurozone fiscal pact. We now have headline numbers for the European Central Bank's second round of cheap three-year loans to European banks. Both the overall total - €529bn this time from €489bn in December - and the number of banks - 800 now from 523 last time - have risen. Let the post mortem begin. Traders don't seem to know which way to turn, reports Alice Ross, the FT's currencies correspondent. 10.30 BREAKING NEWS Banks borrow €529bn from the ECB's second LTRO programme. 800 banks took part. Both numbers are higher than last time. Michael Hunter on the FT's markets desk reports: Euro hits session low of €1.3436 after the data. Traders surprised that so many more banks take part: 800, up from 523 last time. 10.19 Er, still ready... The wait is starting to get to some in the markets: 10.13 Ready, set... 10.11 The debt markets are already acting on expectations of the LTRO, Bloomberg reports. Italian two-year notes rose for a fourth day, driving yields to a 15-month low, on speculation the European Central Bank's allocation of three-year loans will boost demand for debt from Europe's higher-yielding nations. Spain's two-year notes advanced for a 10th consecutive day ... German bunds fell for the first time in three days as the nation prepared to sell as much as €4bn of 10- year bonds. 10.03 The ECB announcement will come any minute now. In the meantime, Bloomberg is reporting the news of a first individual outlining its intentions for the LTRO. Erste Group Bank AG plans to borrow €1.1bn in 3-year funds from the European Central Bank today, Chief Executive Officer Andreas Treichl told analysts in a conference call today. The Austrian lender took €3bn in the ECB's last 3-year tender, Treichl said. 09.57 For those who want to see the ECB's announcement live, this is the space to watch. In typical central bank fashion, there will be no fanfare - just an update to a spreadsheet. 09.34 Michael Hewson, senior market analyst at CMC Markets UK, compares banks tapping the LTRO programme to "an addict getting his latest fix." The key questions today will be how big this LTRO will be, and how will it affect the markets, because there is certainly no evidence that the extra money is finding its way into the European economy. If the LTRO has a low take-up, this could well be seen as a positive in that banks haven't felt the need to use the facility, while a similar figure to the first one could well be broadly neutral. Early evidence from the first LTRO suggests that a lot of banks are parking the money at the ECB, though some Spanish and Italian banks are playing the carry trade by buying up more of their government's sovereign debt, hence the drop in yields, and the ECB has certainly been less active with its SMP [securities markets programme, through which the ECB intervenes in the troubled eurozone government bond markets] as this latest LTRO comes into view, though its balance sheet has ballooned in size. Meanwhile, some serious money (believed to be in the region of £10-£15) is changing hands over on the FT's markets desk, tweets reporter Philip Stafford. And here, by way of a hostage to fortune, is the consensus. 09.19 The markets are holding their breath ahead of the ECB announcement. And Michael Hunter of the FT's markets desk has resorted to allusions to borrowing double entendres from Noel Coward. It's like Norfolk on the markets - flat, quiet and only one story in town, namely the LTRO. The euro is holding around its three-month dollar peak, down just 0.1 per cent on the day at $1.3458. Traders are holding themselves in readiness for a positive number (see 09.06 for more the assorted meanings of "positive"), although dealers are saying that good news could be priced-in and selling could follow the release of the figures. Some of Europe's equities indices are a bit perkier, with the CAC 40 up 18 points in Paris at 3,471.66, a gain of 0.5 per cent. Frankfurt's Xetra Dax 30 is 41 points higher at 6,926.95, a rise of 0.6 per cent. But London's FTSE 100 is flat at 5,930.31. The FTSE Eurofirst 300 is 3 points higher at 1,078.94. 09.06 Will the total borrowing from the cheap ECB's three-year loan facility be higher or lower than December's €489bn? Will more or fewer banks tap the programme than the 523 who did so last time? Your sage calculations and wild guesses are very welcome in the comments section below. What the numbers will mean is, naturally, open to interpretation. If you tend to see the glass as half full, higher numbers might be an indication that banks are being sensible in taking advantage of conveniently cheap funding - funding that has, it seems, helped to ease the pressure on eurozone sovereign debt. A lower total might suggest that banks are starting to return to health and have less need of special credit. If, by contrast, said glass always looks half empty, the implications are reversed. Increased borrowing by more banks would be a sign that the crisis is the financial system is deepening; a fall would suggest that banks are so nervous about appearing weak (do they have something to hide?) that they are declining to take cheap financing that they sorely need. Either way, the end of the world is probably nigh. 08.42 The big news today will be the second round of the European Central Bank's Long-Term Refinancing Operation, or LTRO. In December, when the ECB offered these cheap three-year loans for the first time, the troubled continent's troubled banks swallowed €489bn worth - and Mario Draghi, who had only been in the governor's chair for about 20 minutes, was hailed for what was seen as an unusually decisive response to the crisis by a European technocrat. All we actually expect from the ECB today is not much more than a headline number for the second round of loans, to be followed by much ferreting out of what individual banks have borrowed. Draghi has been keen to remove the stigma that big banking fish such as Josef Ackerman, the head of Deutsche Bank, have attached to borrowing from the LTRO, dismissing such comments as "statements of virility." Should you have missed it, we carried overnight an analysis of the programme and its implications by David Oakley, Mary Watkins and Miles Johnson. For all the praise, there are rumblings that the cheap loans might be allowing banks to avoid making tough reforms. 07.00 Asian markets have not reacted strongly to the news from Dublin. In fact, only mainland Chinese markets traded down, and even then only by a whisker. Elsewhere shares moved up, with Taiwan's main index surging over 2.5 per cent. The euro was a touch stronger against the US dollar in early afternoon Asian trading.