London boroughs have spent about £300 million ($367 million) since the start of 2017 buying properties outside their local area for homeless people, a sign of the deep-rooted problems that are leaving councils around the country at risk of bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Cash-strapped local authorities have acquired more than 1,000 of those homes as soaring rents push more Londoners to crisis point, and historic policies erode the supply of housing that councils have to offer. The figures were released to Bloomberg News under the Freedom of Information Act.

In 1868, a British lawyer set up the first investment trust to pool together small sums of money to buy bonds issued by nations from Turkey to Egypt. A century and a half later, the sector it spawned — closed-end funds traded on stock exchanges — is now worth about £260 billion ($318 billion). It enjoyed a boom in the era of record-low interest rates, more than doubling in size, with a simple pitch: high yields for the masses. But now, central bank interest rates and bond yields are at multi-year highs and have ripped through markets around the world, Bloomberg News reported.

Mallinckrodt plc (in examination under Part 10 of the Companies Act 2014 of Ireland, and hereinafter "Mallinckrodt" or the "Company") announced on Friday that the High Court of Ireland (the "Irish High Court") has made an Order confirming a scheme of arrangement between the Company, its creditors and shareholders (the "Scheme") as proposed by the Examiner of the company, according to a press release. As previously announced, Mallinckrodt's Plan of Reorganization (the "Plan") was confirmed by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware on October 10, 2023.

The British economy flatlined in the third quarter, entering what is expected to be a protracted period of stagnation on the cusp of a recession, the New York Times reported. Gross domestic product recorded no growth in July to September compared with the previous quarter, when it grew 0.2 percent. The economy was 0.6 percent larger in the third quarter than a year ago, when many businesses closed for the state funeral for Queen Elizabeth II, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday.

The Bank of England said on Friday it would start the second leg to its first system-wide stress test of how banks, insurers, pension schemes and clearing houses collectively cope with shocks involving interest rates and risky asset prices over 10 days, Reuters reported. The BoE announced in June it was launching its first sector-wide stress test or system-wide exploratory scenario (SWES), kicking off with information-gathering from over 50 firms.

UBS is facing scrutiny from Finma, Switzerland’s chief financial regulator, as it integrates with Credit Suisse following the merger of the two global banks this year, the regulator said, adding that it will appoint outside monitors to oversee the process, the Wall Street Journal reported. The risks of cyberattacks, information-technology disruptions and fraud have significantly increased during the integration of UBS and Credit Suisse, Finma said Thursday in an annual risk outlook report.

Embattled Swedish landlord SBB is facing an inflection point after one of its creditors demanded its money back, the first time such a written notice has been given, Bloomberg News reported. Stockholm-based Samhallsbyggnadsbolaget i Norden AB — as the firm is officially known — has been at the center of Sweden’s property crisis as landlords scramble to find ways to refinance billions of dollars of bonds amassed in the cheap-money era. Now one of those bondholders has run out of patience, saying repayment is needed on the grounds SBB breached a key term in its debt.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said that keeping the deposit rate at 4% should be enough to tame inflation, but officials will consider raising borrowing costs again if they need to, Bloomberg News reported. Weeks after policymakers refrained from a further increase for the first time since their tightening cycle began last year, she signaled to an event organized by the Financial Times that the central bank is gaining confidence that current monetary settings should do the trick.

Banks in Austria had 2.2 billion euros ($2.35 billion) in exposure in mid-2023 to indebted property and retail giant Signa Group, owner of New York's Chrysler Building and Britain's Selfridges store, Reuters reported. Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) (RBIV.VI) and UniCredit's (CRDI.MI) Bank Austria accounted for two-thirds of this, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The exposures, which have not been previously reported, shed some light on the financial links of Signa, which has been a major player in Europe's property industry for more than two decades.

Switzerland wanted its big banks to be fortresses. In practice, the country’s “too big to fail” banking laws made a sand castle of Credit Suisse, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Swiss rules in question have become an object lesson in the difficulties of designing financial regulation. Created to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis bailouts, Switzerland’s customized version of international capital requirements laid the groundwork for the biggest bank rescue since.