The Bank of England postponed one of its weekly repo operations because its auction platform was experiencing technical difficulties, Bloomberg News reported. Tuesday’s Indexed Long-Term Repo Operation, which was scheduled for 10 a.m. in London, was deferred until the same time on Wednesday due to problems with the Btender auction platform, according to statements from the BOE. A spokesperson at the central bank declined to comment on the cause of the technical issues. The BOE facility allows banks to borrow cash for a six-month period in exchange for other, less liquid assets.

A fraudster in the U.K. who illegally secured a £50,000 Bounce Back Loan designed to support businesses during the Covid pandemic has been handed a suspended sentence, according to a U.K. Insolvency Service press release. Rian O’Keeffe was sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended for two years, when he appeared at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday 30 April. O’Keeffe, of Lisgar Terrace, Hammersmith, is also subject to a three-month curfew and must complete 30 days of rehabilitation activity.

Britain’s construction industry expanded at its fastest pace in 14 months in April, adding to confidence the economy is rebounding from a recession, Bloomberg News reported. The construction purchasing managers’ index jumped to 53 in April, up from 50.2 the previous month, S&P Global said Tuesday. It was well above economists’ expectations of 50.4, with any score above 50 signaling growth. It added to signs that the economy kept expanding in the second quarter after a shallow downturn in the final months of last year.

German manufacturing orders fell unexpectedly in March, a reflection that an industrial rebound in Europe’s largest economy might have to wait, the Wall Street Journal reported. Orders were 0.4% lower than the prior month, German statistics office Destatis said Tuesday. It came after orders fell 0.8% in February, a significantly lower figure than the originally reported 0.2% uptick. Over a three-month period, new orders were down 4.3%. Lower orders of aircrafts, ships and trains, as well as of metal products drove down the overall performance.

The American investment firm 777 Partners, whose bid to buy the English Premier League soccer team Everton has been on hold for months amid doubts about the company’s finances, was accused by one of its lenders on Friday of running a yearslong fraud scheme worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the New York Times reported. The accusation came in a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in New York by Leadenhall Capital Partners, a London-based asset management company.

The Swiss National Bank is examining the best way that financial assets can be digitally tokenised as a way of making payments more secure and efficient, Chairman Thomas Jordan said on Monday, Reuters reported. Jordan said that central banks needed to decide how best to engage in the developments which advocates say will speed up and make payments cheaper. Tokenisation means the digital representation of claims on financial assets on a programmable platform which typically relies on distributed ledger technology.

CaixaBank SA is exploring the sale of €1.1 billion ($1.2 billion) in non-performing loans as it seeks to improve its asset quality, Bloomberg News reported. The Spanish lender is marketing two NPL portfolios that have already attracted potential bidders, according to documents seen by Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter. One is code named Oxygen and it has an outstanding balance of €610 million on about 7,000 unpaid mortgages.

The Bank of England’s effort to stimulate the economy during the pandemic is responsible for all £115 billion ($144 billion) of the net losses on quantitative-easing that UK taxpayers will have to cover, analysis by Bloomberg shows. Using the central bank’s latest estimate of the lifetime cost of the program, a Bloomberg analysis indicates that the BOE is on track to lose at least £120 billion on the bonds it bought under QE during Covid in 2020 and 2021. The earlier phase of QE, done during the financial crisis and up to 2016, will end up being marginally profitable.

Norway’s central bank held its key policy rate at 4.5% and reiterated guidance that the rate is likely to stay at that level for some time, as high wage growth and a weak krone are keeping inflation elevated, the Wall Street Journal reported. Inflation is slowing but is still “markedly” above the 2% target while business costs have increased sharply in recent years, the bank said Friday. “The committee assesses that the policy rate is sufficiently high to return inflation to target within a reasonable time horizon,” it said in a statement.

U.K. retail footfall declined sharply in April on unseasonably wet weather and the earlier Easter timing, pointing to continued struggles for the sector, a monthly report said Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported. The number of visits to stores—comprising high-street, retail-park and shopping-center data—for the four weeks ended April 27 tumbled 7.2% compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the British Retail Consortium and Sensormatic Solutions IQ. Footfall in March fell on year by a less sharp 1.3%, helped as Easter fell in March this year, but April in 2023.