Europe

Drugmaker Mallinckrodt said on Thursday that it had initiated examinership proceedings in the High Court of Ireland, as it seeks protection from actions taken by creditors during the chapter 11 bankruptcy process, Reuters reported. The Ireland-based company filed for its second bankruptcy in the United States last month, with a restructuring plan that would cut $1 billion from what it owes to victims of the U.S. opioid crisis. Read more.

Purecod has entered bankruptcy proceedings and is in the middle of a major restructuring, according to the company’s CEO, Eirik Jørs, SeafoodSource.com reported. Founded in 2020, Sykkylven, Norway-based Purecod was granted a permit to farm a maximum of 3,120 metric tons standing biomass of Atlantic cod at sea in closed pens at Røneset, Storfjorden, Norway from the Møre and Romsdal county municipality in March 2022. Its permits remain active, though the company never began farming fish. Now, the company is four weeks into the first phase of what Jørs described as a two-step bankruptcy process.

The Bank of England halted its long run of interest rate increases on Thursday as the British economy slowed, but it said it was not taking a recent fall in inflation for granted, Reuters reported. A day after a surprise slowing in Britain's fast pace of price growth, the BoE's Monetary Policy Committee voted by a narrow margin of 5-4 to keep Bank Rate at 5.25%. Four members - Jon Cunliffe, Megan Greene, Jonathan Haskel and Catherine Mann - voted to raise rates to 5.5%. It was the first time since December 2021 that the BoE did not increase borrowing costs.

Hungary’s finance minister may propose raising taxes on banks after a year-long recession and the fastest inflation in the European Union blew the country’s budget off course. Shares in OTP Bank Nyrt., the country’s largest lender, plunged, Bloomberg News reported. Record bank earnings expected this year may prompt the government to expand a windfall tax on lenders, Finance Minister Mihaly Varga told economists on Thursday.

German bonds tumbled to send the government’s benchmark borrowing costs to the highest in over a decade, as investors bet on European interest rates remaining elevated for longer, Bloomberg News reported. The yield on 10-year securities jumped eight basis points to 2.78%, the highest since 2011. The latest move up follows hawkish messaging by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday and strong US labor data Thursday, leading traders to expect the European Central Bank will keep policy tight for years.

Russia’s largest bank is attempting to seize some of Glencore Plc’s Russian assets as compensation for what it says is an unpaid oil trading debt, Bloomberg News reported. Sberbank PJSC is asking a Moscow court for €114.8 million ($123 million) in compensation after its Swiss commodity trading unit sold oil to Glencore but never received payment, according to documents published on the court website. The claim highlights the precariousness of international companies’ assets in Russia since the war in Ukraine triggered several waves of sanctions and retaliatory measures.

Inflation in Britain slowed for a third consecutive month in August, unexpectedly continuing its downward trend despite a jump in fuel prices, the New York Times reported. Consumer prices rose 6.7 percent last month compared with a year earlier, slightly slower than the previous month, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. Economists had expected inflation to rise following a global surge in energy prices.

The German government and European politicians in Brussels are leaning on Germany’s largest companies to reduce their exposure to China. The companies are instead doubling down, the Wall Street Journal reported. As government pressure intensifies, German companies with sizable Chinese operations in recent months have been scrambling to insulate those businesses from possible Western sanctions.

U.S. authorities are seeking evidence from Credit Suisse to assess whether the bank misled investors about its financial health as it teetered towards a state-backed rescue by UBS six months ago, Reuters reported. Credit Suisse "has received requests for documents and information" from agencies including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Justice Department and Swiss regulator FINMA, UBS said in a financial filing on Aug. 31. In the note, part of UBS's 124-page second-quarter report, UBS also said that three U.S.

Despite a successful investment round in January, and expansion plans, UK electric car subscription service Onto is now facing insolvency, Electrive.com reported. Onto is now in administration, despite raising large investments in January this year. The company raised £100 million (nearly €114 million) from global investment group CDPQ and asset manager Pollen Street to expand its UK fleet. There was even talk of expanding to other regions.