France wants to make it easier for private equity funds to invest in listed companies and less costly for finance firms to let go of traders, part of a new push to make Paris more appealing for financial services, a lawmaker said on Monday, Reuters reported. France has been trying to lure high-paying finance jobs to the French capital since Britain's 2016 vote to leave the European Union, and it has had some success. Between 2017 and 2022, more than 7,000 jobs were created in the sector, according to a draft of a new bill, which was released on Monday and will go to parliament next month.

European Central Bank officials are leaning against any immediate change in the amount of money lenders need to park with the institution interest-free, removing for now the threat of a hit to banking profitability the industry had been fretting over, Bloomberg News reported. Ahead of a crucial meeting on Wednesday on a revamp of the ECB’s framework for implementing monetary policy, a push by some hawks to increase the so-called Minimum Reserve Requirements, or MRR, from the current 1% has struggled to gain momentum.

A €200 million ($218 million) loan to Signa’s flagship property unit has become a roadblock in attempts to sell off its assets and fund a restructuring, according to insolvency administrators, Bloomberg News reported. The loan from the Schoeller Group, controlled by one of Germany’s industrialist families, is one of the last cash injections Signa Prime Selection managed to secure in July 2023, before its insolvency in December.

Croatian hosiery producer Jadran Tvornica Carapa [ZSE:JDTC] has filed for bankruptcy at the commercial court in Zagreb over its failure to repay a debt of 167,000 euro ($183,000), the court said on Friday, SeeNews.com reported. The court has scheduled a hearing on March 27 to discuss the request to open bankruptcy proceedings against the debtor, according to a court decision submitted by Jadran to the Zagreb Stock Exchange. The company’s bank accounts have been blocked for 110 days.

The number of insolvent Romanian companies increased by an annual 16.7% to 509 in January, said ONRC, the country's trade registry, SeeNews.com reported. Despite falling by 20.8% on the year to 76, the highest number of insolvent companies and legal entities was registered in the capital Bucharest, data published on the ONRC website on Wednesday showed. The highest number of insolvent companies was registered in the wholesale, retail and motor vehicles servicing sector - 235, up by an annual 1.5%, followed by construction with 104, up by 15.6%, and manufacturing with 64, up by 16.4%.

A U.K. government agency is seeking to disqualify Lex Greensill, the founder of failed specialty lender Greensill Capital, from acting as a director, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Insolvency Service said on Thursday that it had started proceedings against Greensill to disqualify him from running or controlling companies for up to 15 years, owing to his conduct as a director of Greensill Capital. The agency had been investigating the directors of Greensill after its collapse in March 2021.

Rene Benko, the founder of the ailing Signa conglomerate, filed for personal insolvency at an Austrian court that was in the process of reviewing his personal finances, Bloomberg News reported. Benko made the filing voluntarily, Norbert Wess, a lawyer for the businessman told Bloomberg by email, confirming earlier media reports by the Kronen Zeitung newspaper. The decision deepens the private fallout for the tycoon from the financial meltdown at his property and retail empire, large parts of which sought creditor protection last year.

Russia has seen a sharp spike in corporate bankruptcies, according to a report that comes as Vladimir Putin looks to tax companies more to pay for his social program and the sanctions-hit economy continues to face turbulence, Newsweek reported. The business newspaper Kommersant reported that in the first two months of 2024, corporate bankruptcies had increased by more than a half compared with the same period last year—and experts predicted an increase in insolvencies in future.

NHS Lothian accepted the handover of an unfinished children's hospital to stop the private consortium behind the deal going bust, a public inquiry has heard, according to BBC Scotland News. The IHSL group building the Sick Kids in Edinburgh was facing insolvency, just months before the facility was due to open in July 2019. If IHSL went bust then NHS Lothian faced paying out at least £150m to get the project finished. The health board took ownership of the building in February 2019. But four months later last-minute inspections found safety concerns over the hospital's ventilation systems.

The European Central Bank still views commercial real estate contagion as one of the main risks for financial stability and is actively monitoring the situation, Vice President Luis de Guindos said, Bloomberg News reported. Speaking to reporters in Frankfurt on Thursday after a monetary-policy decision, he acknowledged that fallout has been limited but that officials remain watchful for any ripples spreading from the impact of high borrowing costs and plunging valuations.