Babylon Health is looking to sell its UK business, including its 100,000 patient NHS GP practice, and may fall into administration, the company has announced, DigitalHealth.net reported. Following the story back in May that shares in Babylon fell sharply on news that the company was being taken private as part of a new debt plan, the firm announced this week that a $34.5m attempt to restructure and return to private ownership fell through. Babylon GP at Hand, an online-first GP practice with over 100,000 registered NHS patients around London, is the firm’s main remaining NHS service.

Britain’s young adults increasingly are priced out of the housing market and are living with their parents later into life after “giving up on property,” Bloomberg News reported. That’s the conclusion of both official figures from the census and a report from the real estate website Zoopla, which dubbed the group “Guppies” in contrast to the aspirational professionals from the 1980s known as “Yuppies.” About 51% of people in England and Wales aged 20 to 24 opted to live with their parents, census data collected in 2021 and released Wednesday showed.

Consumer expectations for euro-area inflation fell in June but remained above the European Central Bank’s 2% target as officials ponder whether to continue their unprecedented bout of interest-rate hikes, Bloomberg News reported. Expectations for the next 12 months declined to 3.4% from 3.9% in May, the ECB said Tuesday in its monthly survey. For three years ahead, they dropped to 2.3% from 2.5%. The results come before a September meeting that President Christine Lagarde has said will decide between a 10th straight increase in the deposit rate and a pause.

Italian bank stocks plunged Tuesday after the Cabinet approved a proposal to apply a 40% tax on some bank profits this year to help consumers and businesses cope with higher borrowing costs, the Associated Press reported. Transport Minister Matteo Salvini announced the tax at a Monday evening press conference, saying it was a measure of “social equity” to make up for a series of interest rate hikes from the European Central Bank.

Russia's budget deficit for January-July widened to 2.82 trillion roubles ($29.3 billion), or 1.8% of gross domestic product (GDP), the finance ministry said on Tuesday, citing preliminary estimates, Reuters reported. In the first seven months of last year, Russia posted a surplus of 557 billion roubles, but significant outlays to support its war in Ukraine - which Moscow calls a "special military operation" - and a barrage of Western sanctions on its oil and gas exports have hit government coffers since then.

Germany's largest real estate group Vonovia slipped to a 2 billion euro ($2.19 billion) second quarter loss and wrote down the value of its properties by 3 billion euros on Thursday in the latest sign of stress in the country's property sector, Reuters reported. After a decade-long property boom, Germany is undergoing a sharp reversal of fortune after an era of cheap money ended. Vonovia's quarterly loss compared to a profit of 1.8 billion euros a year earlier, and Germany's biggest landlord confirmed its forecast for a 2023 drop in a key profit measure.

British employers reduced the number of new permanent staff they hired through recruitment agencies by the most since mid 2020 last month due to concerns about the economic outlook, adding to signs that the market is becoming tougher for job seekers, Reuters reported. A gauge of permanent staff hiring by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and accountants KPMG fell to 42.4, the lowest since the 34.3 in June 2020 when the country was in lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Bank of England on Thursday raised its key interest rate for the 14th time in a row and said it may do so again as it tries to cool the fastest rise in consumer prices in the Group of Seven advanced democracies, the Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K.’s central bank increased its bank rate to 5.25% from 5%, lifting it to its highest level since February 2008 and matching recent moves by both the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank.

The downturn in euro zone business activity worsened more than initially thought in July as the slump in manufacturing was accompanied by a further slowing of growth in the bloc's dominant services industry, a survey showed, Reuters reported. HCOB's final Composite Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), compiled by S&P Global and seen as a good gauge of overall economic health, dropped to an eight-month low of 48.6 in July from June's 49.9. That was below the 50 mark separating growth from contraction for a second straight month and shy of a preliminary estimate for 48.9.

Thousands of jobs are at risk at Wilko Ltd. after the British low-cost retailer signaled it was at risk of insolvency proceedings due to “mounting cash pressures,” Bloomberg News reported. The privately-owned chain, which sells everything from stationery to hardware, has filed notice of its intention to appoint administrators at the UK’s High Court, following weeks hunting for a rescue deal. Wilko, which has 400 shops and employs about 12,000 people, started from a single hardware store in 1930.