Britishvolt Ltd’s administrator selected Australian startup Recharge Industries as the preferred bidder to acquire the majority of the insolvent UK battery firm’s business and assets, Bloomberg News reported. The acquisition is expected to take place within the next seven days, according to a statement Monday by EY, Britishvolt’s administrator. Recharge Industries is a subsidiary of Scale Facilitation Partners LLC. Once considered the UK’s best shot for a homegrown electric-vehicle battery supplier, Britishvolt went into bankruptcy last month after failing to identify any potential rescuers.

For more than a decade, the British government has run its National Health Service, the world’s largest government-run healthcare system, on a tight budget. The NHS prided itself on being one of the leanest healthcare systems in the developed world, spending less per head on average than its large European neighbors—and far less than the U.S. Now the state-funded service is falling apart, the Wall Street Journal reported. People who suffer heart attacks or strokes wait more than 1½ hours on average for an ambulance. Hospitals are so full they are turning patients away.

Britishvolt Ltd.’s administrators received two bids for the insolvent UK battery startup when the deadline for proposals ended on Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported. A consortium of former Britishvolt investors and Australian battery startup Recharge Industries submitted bids, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the process is confidential. Once considered the UK’s best shot for a homegrown electric-vehicle battery supplier, Britishvolt went into bankruptcy last month after failing to identify any potential rescuers.

Loss-making Norwegian airline Flyr said on Tuesday that it would file for bankruptcy after failing to raise the cash it needed for its operations, Reuters reported. "There is no longer a realistic opportunity to achieve a solution for the short-term liquidity situation," the company said in a statement, adding the board's decision was unanimous. More than 400 employees will lose their jobs as a result of the bankruptcy, Flyr founder and board Chair Erik Braathen told Norwegian daily Dagbladet.

Lithuania, which saw registration of crypto companies soar almost fivefold last year, is reining in the growth of digital-asset service providers to address transparency issues and money-laundering risks, Bloomberg News reported. The Registry Office in Vilnius released a list of 206 crypto companies Thursday that pass a set of stricter regulatory requirements imposed last November. Regulators winnowed down a list of 850 companies after imposing the new rules, according to the Finance Ministry.

In the space of just five years, a little-known company on the outskirts of London has grown into a payments-industry powerhouse, processing more than 1 billion euros ($1 billion) in transactions every month. Backed by licenses from regulators in the UK and Lithuania, Transactive Systems Ltd. touted itself as “one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in Europe,” with an ability to service clients from “compliance-intense industries” including cryptocurrencies, gambling and foreign-exchange trading, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg.

The bankrupt FTX group of cryptocurrency companies extended the deadlines to bid for its Japan and Europe businesses as administrators strive to raise funds to help pay back creditors, Bloomberg News reported. The preliminary bid deadline is now March 8 and the auction date becomes April 26, according to a court filing on Wednesday. Administrators in December put several FTX units on the auction block, including LedgerX, the Japanese and Singaporean crypto exchanges, and the European digital assets and derivatives business.

The European Central Bank raised interest rates by 0.5% on Thursday and explicitly signalled at least one more hike of the same magnitude next month, reaffirming it would stay the course in the fight against high inflation, Reuters reported. But financial markets immediately interpreted the move as suggesting the tightening cycle might in fact end soon - just as they had done on Wednesday after U.S. Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell said there were signs inflation was easing.

The Bank of England raised interest rates for a 10th consecutive time on Thursday, by half a percentage point, as policymakers kept up their vigilant stance against inflationary pressures, the New York Times reported. The bank’s policymakers lifted the key rate to 4 percent, the highest since 2008. But after more than a year of rising interest rates, inflation in Britain and several other major economies appears to have peaked, and the bank’s officials softened their tone on the future path of rate increases as the economy enters a contraction.

The number of Swedish bankruptcies soared to the highest level in at least a decade in January, as construction companies come under pressure from an ongoing housing-market rout, Bloomberg News reported. The number of companies filing for bankruptcy increased by 47% from a year earlier in January, to 622, according to credit reference agency UC. The data highlights the effects of Sweden’s worst housing-price slump in three decades, which has contributed to a surge in defaults in the construction sector, with 130 builders filing for bankruptcy last month.