A London judge ordered the shuttering of the UK unit of La Perla, a maker of luxury lingerie, over unpaid tax debts, underlining the pressure facing parent company Tennor Holding BV and its ultimate majority owner, Lars Windhorst, Bloomberg News reported. La Perla Global Management (UK) Limited was wound-up by a High Court judge in London on Wednesday, as the group faced £2.8 million ($3.4 million) of unpaid tax and a petition from His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs.

The French economy grew more sluggishly over the summer as production and exports slowed, suggesting tight monetary policy is squeezing industry in the country, the Wall Street Journal reported. The eurozone’s second-largest economy grew 0.1% between July and September compared with the previous quarter, after a more dynamic 0.6% increase booked in the prior three-month period, according to data set out Tuesday by national statistics agency Insee. Exports, which had boosted net trade and GDP in the second quarter, reversed path and slid 1.4% in the quarter, the data showed.

The Nordic construction industry is facing further challenges as two of the region’s largest builders, YIT Oyj and Skanska AB, report difficulties in selling properties, Bloomberg News reported. YIT Oyj has seen a 30% increase in completed unsold apartments in the third quarter, while Skanska AB experienced a more than 50% decline in quarterly profit due to a weak market outlook in Sweden, Norway, and Finland. This indicates a worsening situation for the construction industry in the Nordic region.

The number of companies going bust this year is on track to be the highest since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009. Insolvencies rose 10% from a year ago in the three months to the end of September, the latest official figures for England and Wales show, BBC.com reported. There has also been a sharp rise in the number of firms at risk of going bust. Firms in "critical financial distress" jumped 25% in the last three months, insolvency expert Begbies Traynor says. They are defined as having county court judgments exceeding £5,000 against them - often a precursor to going under.

Italy plans to crackdown on landlords who do not pay taxes on short-term flat rentals such as those made through platforms like Airbnb, politicians said on Monday, in a move that could boost fiscal revenue by 1 billion euros ($1.06 billion), Reuters reported. After a meeting between key coalition figures over the 2024 budget, the co-ruling Forza Italia party said in a statement that Italy planned to introduce a national identification code to be used for short-term rentals. "That code will bring out the revenue of those who rent flats without declaring them.

The question of how Britain will respond to President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the $369 billion landmark legislation offering deep subsidies for green investment, has followed Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s finance minister, for most of the past year, the New York Times reported. Mr. Hunt urged patience and promised an answer when he updates the country’s budget in a few weeks. But as that speech approaches, expectations that he will offer anything as generous as the American largess have been squashed.

German inflation slowed markedly — and more than expected — in October as Europe’s biggest economy struggles to grow, Bloomberg News reported. At 3%, price pressures are the weakest since June 2021, the statistics office said Monday. Economists had predicted a moderation to 3.3%. The result underpins the European Central Bank’s argument that a record bout of interest-rate increases is starting to show its effects. A sharp retreat is also expected in Italy and, to a lesser extent, in France and in the 20-nation euro zone, with data due Tuesday.

Sweden’s economy was stagnant last quarter, as rising borrowing costs and growing unemployment hurt spending in the Nordic region’s largest country, Bloomberg News reported. Gross domestic product, adjusted for seasonal swings, was unchanged in the third quarter from the previous three-month period, according to preliminary data published by Statistics Sweden on Monday. The development was weaker than expected by economists, who had penciled in growth of 0.3%, following a slump in the second quarter.

Spanish inflation accelerated for a fourth month, hitting the highest level since April and supporting calls to prolong government measures to shield households from the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation, Bloomberg News reported. October’s reading of 3.5% was largely due to electricity costs, the national statistics institute said Monday. That compares with 3.3% a month earlier and is less than the 3.8% median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. A measure of underlying pressures that excludes energy and fresh-food costs slowed to 5.2%.

Russia’s Central Bank on Friday raised its key interest rate by two percentage points to 15 percent, a bigger increase than expected as the bank said it was trying to bring down stubbornly high inflation, the New York Times reported. The central bank, which said the annual inflation rate would range from 7 to 7.5 percent this year, predicted a long period of “tight monetary conditions” in order to bring the rate down close to its target of 4 percent.