The downturn in euro zone business activity accelerated last month as demand in the dominant services industry weakened further, a survey showed on Monday, suggesting there is a growing chance of a recession in the 20-country currency union, Reuters reported. The economy contracted 0.1% in the third quarter, official data has shown, and Monday's final Composite Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for October indicated the bloc entered the final quarter of 2023 on the back foot.
Resources Per Country
- Albania
- Austria
- Belarus
- Belgium
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Gibraltar
- Greece
- Guernsey
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Ireland
- Isle of Man
- Italy
- Jersey
- Kosovo
- Latvia
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Macedonia
- Malta
- Moldova
- Monaco
- Montenegro
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Russia
- San Marino
- Serbia
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
- Vatican City
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An Italian judge has ordered the seizure of 779.5 million euros ($836.40 million) from short-term rentals platform Airbnb's Ireland unit for alleged tax evasion, Milan prosecutors' office said on Monday, Reuters reported. The probe concerns Airbnb's alleged failure to withold 21% of landlords' rental income and pay it to Italian tax authorities, as required by a 2017 law, prosecutors in the northern Italian city said in a statement.
Scandinavian airline SAS secured an investment agreement with a consortium for restructuring aid of 13.2 billion Swedish crowns ($1.21 billion), with a loan from Castlelake replacing its previous debtor-in-possession financing by Apollo Global Management, the carrier said on Saturday, Reuters reported. The winning bidder consortium, which includes Air France-KLM, Lind Invest ApS and the Danish state, increased its proposed investment by $25.26 million.
Residential building across Europe has tumbled as costs soar, while sluggish bureaucracies and increasingly stringent energy-efficiency regulations add to the headwinds. With housing already tight, the situation threatens to weigh on growth and further stoke political tensions as shortages squeeze more and more voters, Bloomberg News reported. The hardest-hit countries are among the wealthiest. New building permits in Germany have fallen more than 27% in the first half. Permits in France are down 28% through July, and UK home building is expected to drop more than 25% this year.
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The Bank of England held interest rates at the highest levels in 15 years on Thursday, though policymakers were again divided on the best course of action to stamp out high inflation, the New York Times reported. Six members of the central bank’s nine-member rate-setting committee voted to keep rates at 5.25 percent amid signs that inflation would continue to ease and the economy was weakening. But they said restrictive monetary policy would be needed for an “extended” period, a stronger stance than before, according to the minutes of this week’s policy meeting.
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The Bank of England's decision to hold its policy interest rate steady on Thursday puts the world's three major central banks in a "higher-for-longer" holding pattern the length of which will hinge on how inflation behaves, the strength of U.S. growth and the depth of developing slowdowns in Europe and the UK, and whether bond markets sustain the higher borrowing costs that have attracted notice on both sides of the Atlantic, Reuters reported.
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The Czech central bank signaled that concern over inflation risks overshadows a weakening economy for now as policymakers left the door open to an interest-rate cut next month, Bloomberg News reported. The monetary panel voted to keep the benchmark rate at 7%, even as two out of seven members sought a quarter-point reduction. Governor Ales Michl said most central bankers decided to keep the policy “at a very restrictive level” to prevent excessive wage demands from triggering an inflation spiral.
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Leading AI developers agreed to work with governments to test new frontier models before they are released, to help manage the risks of the rapidly developing technology, in a potentially landmark achievement at the UK's artificial intelligence summit, Reuters reported. Some tech and political leaders have warned that AI poses huge risks if not controlled, ranging from eroding consumer privacy to danger to humans and causing a global catastrophe, and these concerns have sparked a race by governments and institutions to design safeguards and regulation.
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England’s largest councils are “running out of road” with almost half saying they are unsure if they can balance their budgets next year, the Independent reported. The County Councils Network (CCN) warned on Wednesday that England’s 41 county and unitary councils face an estimated budget gap of £4 billion over the next three years which they will be unable to plug with more cuts. CCN vice-chairman Barry Lewis said the scale of cuts needed to fill the budget gap is “simply unsustainable” after “a decade of continuous cutbacks”.
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Swedish bankruptcies increased to their highest level for the month of October since records began in 1999, according to data compiled by collection agency Creditsafe, Bloomberg News reported. During the month, 795 limited companies went bankrupt, marking an increase of 18% from October last year and 77% compared to the same month in 2021. “We have not been anywhere near such high levels before for the month of October,” said Managing Director Henrik Jacobsson of Creditsafe i Sverige AB in a statement on Wednesday. Higher levels have previously been recorded for other months.
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