777 Partners, the U.S. investment firm trying to buy English Premier League football club Everton, has hired restructuring experts to overcome “various operational challenges,” according to an email sent to the group’s employees Thursday, Bloomberg News reported. Miami-based 777’s proposed takeover of Everton has been held up as the Premier League is yet to grant clearance, while 777 has asked for deadlines to be extended to complete the deal. Last week the company was accused of fraud by lenders in a New York court filing.

Swedish homebuilders should start to recover later this year, boosted by the central bank’s decision to cut interest rates before its Eurozone and U.S. peers, Bloomberg News reported. The value of orders is expected to tick up for Sweden’s three largest homebuilders, Skanska AB, Peab AB and NCC AB, brightening the outlook for the industry in the Nordic country. “I would expect new starts to gradually pick up through 2024,” Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Albin Sandberg said in an email, while cautioning that it will “probably take some time” before that turns into stronger demand for new builds.

The U.K. economy returned to growth in the first three months of the year, a sign that the country is beginning to recover from the damage caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product between January and March was 0.6% higher than in the previous three-month period, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. It was the U.K.’s strongest performance since the final quarter of 2021, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On an annualized basis, the U.K.

The European Union’s General Court has cancelled the decision made by the European Commission to approve a restructuring aid package for German airline Condor in 2021, the Irish Independent reported. The Commission approved the €321m package in July 2021. The German government had planned to give this to the airline to support the restructuring and ongoing operations of the airline. Condor had faced challenges that year following the insolvency of former owner Thomas Cook. Ryanair had challenged the decision of the Commission before the EU General Court.

After a long stretch of high inflation, the Bank of England finally has its 2 percent inflation target firmly within its sights, the New York Times reported. The central bank said on Thursday that it expected inflation to reach its target in two years, and then go even lower, a forecast that comes as policymakers inch toward cutting interest rates. The majority of the bank’s nine-person rate-setting committee voted this week to hold rates at 5.25 percent, the highest since early 2018 and where they have been for nine months.

Sweden’s central bank lowered its key interest rate for the first time in more than eight years on Wednesday, underlining the readiness of European policy makers to move ahead of the Federal Reserve as inflation cools, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Riksbank cut its key rate to 3.75% from 4.0% becoming only the second central bank from a rich, advanced economy to begin its easing cycle following the post-pandemic surge in inflation. Switzerland’s central bank was the first to move in March. This century, Europe has typically followed the U.S. in lowering borrowing costs.

European Central Bank Governing Council member Joachim Nagel said forces including geopolitics and decarbonization could keep consumer-price growth elevated in the years ahead, Bloomberg News reported. “A range of potential factors could lead to higher inflationary pressure in the future,” the Bundesbank president told a conference Tuesday, also citing demographic trends that may lead to “persistently higher wage growth.” While saying more research is needed, Nagel doesn’t expect a return to the kind of weak inflation rates seen before the pandemic.

The number of European banks taking account of environmental risks in their reserves for loan losses has more than tripled in a year, signaling an initial win for the regulator in its effort to prepare for climate change, Bloomberg News reported. After the European Central Bank ramped up pressure last year, a wider effort to change how banks use so-called provisioning overlays has resulted in 55% of lenders now taking climate into account, up from 16% last year, according to a presentation by the regulator delivered last month to auditors and seen by Bloomberg.

Fisker's Austrian unit filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday as the cash-strapped EV startup looks for strategic options after talks with a major automaker for a potential investment collapsed, Reuters reported. The unit, Fisker GmbH, said other divisions are not included in the restructuring process and will continue to operate normally. Fisker has been under pressure since it warned of going concern in February. It faces stiff competition and subdued customer spending in the wake of a tough economy.

Attorneys for Sung Kook “Bill” Hwang are expected to argue that prosecutors are pushing a novel and nonsensical market manipulation theory when the criminal trial of the former Archegos Capital Management boss kicks off in New York this month, Reuters reported. Archegos, a $36 billion family office which invested Hwang's personal wealth, collapsed spectacularly in March 2021 after its highly leveraged bets on a small number of stocks via complex derivatives quickly soured.