Ukraine's central bank could start cutting its key rate by one to two percentage points in coming months, notes from the central bank's committee for monetary policy showed on Monday, Reuters reported. The bank has kept its main rate unchanged at 25% since last summer, when it increased the rate to tame growing consumer prices fuelled by Russia's war in Ukraine. Recent economic and inflation trends offer grounds for cautious optimism, the central bank said, adding that the majority of members of its monetary policy committee assumed that rate cuts might start earlier than initially forecast.

Austria’s largest insolvency in a decade is turning into a race for workers from companies desperate to fill open jobs, Bloomberg News reported. Retailers, banks, insurers, the postal service and even the country’s tiny military have offered to take some of the 1,034 workers initially set to be laid off from furniture chain Kika/Leiner. The bankrupt firm is itself organizing a jobs fair to aid the process.

The storied brokerage firm of Lorentzen & Co. has declared bankruptcy after years of losses, changing its name and moving in a new direction after more than 100 years in operation, the Maritime Executive reported. Lorentzen & Co. was founded in 1919 by four brothers from the prominent Norwegian shipping family of the same name. It has had a concentration in dry bulk broking, but has had staff working in other segments as well. Its operations have lost money in recent years, and in 2022 it announced that it would be downsizing its team.

Newcastle United co-owner Amanda Staveley has been plunged into a multimillion-pound bankruptcy row with a Greek shipping tycoon, The Telegraph reported. Ms Staveley, who helped Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund acquire the Premier League club in 2021, has asked the High Court to prevent shipping magnate Victor Restis from forcing her into bankruptcy, new filings reveal. Mr Restis claims Ms Staveley has failed to repay a loan of more than £35m that dates back to over a decade.

Belgium's FSMA regulator on Friday ordered Binance to cease offering any virtual currency services in the country, adding to pressure on the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Reuters reported. Binance, which was founded by Changpeng Zhao in Shanghai in 2017, has grown to dominate the crypto industry but also faces scrutiny from regulators keen to clamp down on money-laundering. It has consistently defended its business practices.

The Bank of England raised interest rates by a bigger-than-expected half a percentage point on Thursday after it said there had been "significant" news suggesting British inflation would take longer to fall, Reuters reported. The BoE's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted 7-2 to raise its main interest rate to 5% from 4.5%, its highest since 2008 and its largest rate increase since February, following stickier inflation and wage growth since its policymakers met last in May.

The Swiss National Bank raised its policy interest rate by 25 basis points on Thursday as the central bank pressed ahead with its campaign to dampen stubborn inflation and signalled that more tightening was likely to come, Reuters reported. Chairman Thomas Jordan pointed to rising inflationary pressures and the danger of price increases becoming entrenched as the SNB hiked Swiss rates for the fifth time in succession. Although Swiss inflation ebbed to 2.2% in May from 2.6% in April, there was still more work to be done to tackle rising prices, Jordan told reporters.

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) on Thursday said it was crucial to draw lessons from the Credit Suisse crisis that led to the bank's downfall and forced rescue by rival UBS and consider measures that would prevent such events in the future, Reuters reported. "These measures need to strengthen banks’ resilience in order to prevent a loss of confidence wherever possible, and ensure a broad range of effective options to stabilise, recover or wind down a systemically important bank in the event of a crisis," the central bank said in its 2023 financial stability report.

Norway’s central bank accelerated interest-rate increases and pledged more aggressive tightening, intensifying its response to stubborn inflation and a weak currency, Bloomberg News reported. Norges Bank lifted its key deposit rate on Thursday by 50 basis points to 3.75%, prompting the krone to post its biggest advance in two weeks. The decision outcome was anticipated by a large minority of economists, with the rest predicting a smaller move. This is the 11th hike in the Norwegian benchmark since September 2021.

German automotive supplier Allgaier, whose customers include Porsche, has filed for insolvency, a court said on Wednesday, a year after being sold to a Chinese investor, Reuters reported. The Goeppingen district court said that it had appointed Pluta law firm's Fritz Zanker as provisional insolvency administrator. Allgaier, which has about 1,700 employees, supplies major car manufacturers with sheet metal parts and is also active in toolmaking and process engineering.