Everyone has been looking for evidence of the pain in commercial property hitting banks. Behold, Switzerland's Julius Baer. The private bank Monday said it was reviewing its business of lending to rich clients after it took a hit on a 606 million Swiss franc ($680 million) exposure to a set of loans backed by a single client's commercial real estate and luxury retail holdings, the Wall Street Journal reported. It didn't name the client, but a person familiar with matter said the loans are backed by Rene Benko's troubled Austrian property group, Signa.

Austrian property group Signa could see more of its units file for insolvency as soon as this week as the real estate empire is running out of cash, people with direct knowledge of the matter said on Monday, Reuters reported. The group, controlled by an Austrian magnate but whose business is anchored in Germany, held talks with Elliott Investment Management to try to raise funds, according to one of the people, describing the company's scramble for cash.

Heavily indebted French supermarket group Casino has received expressions of interest for its hypermarket and supermarket stores, the company said on Monday, declining to name the bidders or number of stores it intends to sell, Reuters reported. Casino has been preparing to sell more supermarkets to Intermarche, a unit of Groupement Les Mousquetaires, or even put its remaining hypermarkets and supermarkets in France up for sale to the highest bidder, French daily Les Echos reported on Monday.

Thousands of former Wilko staff have been paid a combined more than £42 million since losing their jobs, it has been revealed, Leicester Live reported. The Leicester-founded firm collapsed earlier this year, but parts of the business have been saved by discount rivals. The news of payments was revealed by the Government’s Insolvency Service which said it had been covering redundancy pay or statutory notice pay for former Wilko staff. The historic high street chain, which was founded in Leicester, was forced to close all its stores after falling into administration in the summer.

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said getting inflation down to the central bank's 2% target will be "hard work" as most of its recent fall was due to the unwinding of the jump in energy costs last year, Reuters reported. "The rest of it has to be done by policy and monetary policy," Bailey said in an interview with website ChronicleLive published on Monday. "And policy is operating in what I call a restrictive way at the moment - it is restricting the economy.

Airline SAS AB received approval from a bankruptcy court in New York for a $1.2 billion rescue package that will see Air France-KLM and private equity firm Castlelake LP become owners in the Scandinavian flag-carrier, Bloomberg News reported. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2022, saying it faced a significant decline in passenger demand during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as a series of pilot strikes and intense competition from low cost air carriers.

Around a quarter of Helical Plc’s portfolio will sit empty after the loss of a lease with bankrupt WeWork Inc., Bloomberg News reported. The departure of law firm Baker McKenzie from its central London office ahead of a redevelopment will also contribute to the higher vacancy rate, the London property developer said in a statement. Helical said EPRA earnings per share fell to 1.1 pence in the first half through September, down from 4.8 pence a year earlier.“While interest from potential occupiers has been encouraging, lease negotiations are taking longer to conclude,” the company said.

The euro zone's sinking commercial property sector could struggle for years, the European Central Bank said on Tuesday, posing a threat to the banks and investors which financed it, Reuters reported. An ECB report which examines threats to financial stability underscored heightened concern over a property boom that is now unravelling in countries such as Germany and Sweden. Commercial property prices have been hit by economic weakness and high interest rates over the last year, challenging the sector's profitability and business model, the ECB said.

The German government has imposed a freeze on most new spending commitments in what officials on Tuesday said was a necessary step as Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition grapples with a deepening budget crisis, Reuters reported. The government's spending plans were thrown into disarray by a court ruling last week that blocked the government from transferring 60 billion euros ($65 billion) in unused funds from the pandemic towards green initiatives and could starve some German industry of support to keep it competitive in a weak economy.

Transferring back money from Germany's Climate Transformation fund after a top court ruling causes a chain reaction, as the now-cancelled 60-billion-euro in funds leverage far more capital, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. "These funds are not an add-on that one can carelessly do without ... the loss to the economy if investments were not made now would be even greater," Habeck told a news conference in the city of Jena. The government was now preparing and discussing at high speed how to set up its budget in light of the ruling and the missing funds.