A Russian scheme to grant loan payment holidays to troops fighting in Ukraine, and for banks to write off the entire debt if they are killed or maimed, has added to growing pressure for the remaining overseas lenders in Russia to leave, Reuters reported. Almost a year since Moscow launched what it calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine, a handful of European banks, including Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International and Italy's UniCredit, are still making money in Russia.

Britain's economy showed zero growth in the final three months of 2022 - enough for it to avoid entering a recession for now - but faces tough prospects in 2023 as households continue to wrestle with double-digit inflation, Reuters reported. Monthly gross domestic product data for December - when there were widespread strikes in the public sector, rail and postal services - showed a 0.5% contraction, the Office for National Statistics said, larger than the 0.3% forecast.

The European Central Bank needs to keep raising rates beyond March and must hold them at high levels for a while even as inflation falls and this "sacrifice" becomes more difficult to explain to the public, the ECB’s newest policymaker said, Reuters reported. Having raised rates by 3 percentage points since July, policymakers have started to ponder when and where the fastest tightening cycle in ECB history will end, especially since inflation is now retreating quickly from record highs. But Croatian central bank Governor Boris Vujcic, whose nation joined the euro on Jan.

Moldova’s pro-Western government resigned amid the worsening economic fallout from the war in neighboring Ukraine, a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia was trying to destabilize the country, the Wall Street Journal reported. Announcing her decision Friday, Moldovan Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita told a news briefing in the capital Chisinau that no one could have predicted the scale of the challenges her government has faced since the Russian invasion began nearly a year ago.

Shoppers around the world will pay even more for groceries this year than they did in 2022, according to retailers, consumer goods firms and investors, unless commodity costs decline or the shift to cheaper store-brand products accelerates, Reuters reported. Retailers and consumer goods producers have been stuck in tough price negotiations for more than a year now, with friction beginning in 2021 over COVID-related supply chain logjams.

Ukraine's monthly consumer price inflation quickened to 0.8% in January compared with the previous month, driven by higher food prices, the State Statistics Service said on Thursday, Reuters reported. It said in a statement that food prices rose by 1.4% last month because of increases in the price of fruits and vegetables. Monthly inflation stood flat at 0.7% in November and December 2022.

Some companies in Europe have said they may unwind price hikes introduced in recent years as soaring costs of energy and other raw materials have eased, potentially providing some relief to consumers, Reuters reported. The projected cuts are the latest sign that inflation in the euro zone has peaked and may encourage hopes of a soft landing for the region's economy, which have fuelled a stock market rally this year. They are not yet broad-based though.

Polish banks are sounding increasingly sanguine about a looming European Union court ruling that the country’s financial regulator once warned may spell a full-blown crisis for the industry, Bloomberg News reported. In the latest chapter of the saga centered around $17 billion of mainly Swiss franc-denominated loans, EU judges are set to rule whether banks can sue clients, who got their mortgage contracts canceled in courts — a way for the industry to recover some losses and deter future litigation.

Public transport, schools and refinery supplies in France were disrupted on Tuesday as trade unions led a third wave of nationwide strikes against President Emmanuel Macron's plans to make the French work longer before retirement, Reuters reported. Tuesday's multi-sector walkouts come a day after pension reform legislation began its bumpy passage through parliament, and are a test of Macron's ability to enact change without a working majority in the National Assembly.