The chief executive officer of Castellum AB warned that the rental market will weaken more as the Swedish landlord reported that the value of newly signed contracts was lower than terminated leases in the fourth quarter, Bloomberg News reported. “The property industry has a tough year behind it, and we should expect a weaker rental market going forward,” CEO Joacim Sjoberg said in the company’s earnings report, cautioning that more tenants — consisting of Swedish businesses and the public sector — may be impacted by a waning economy.

The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday said that it had formally launched a new trust fund to help support Ukraine's economic and financial reforms over the next five years, with a goal to raise $65 million from donor countries, Reuters reported. The Ukraine Capacity Development Fund was launched in Kyiv with initial resources of $16.5 million provided by the Netherlands, Slovakia, Latvia, Japan and Lithuania.

The British business of the Body Shop has collapsed into administration, putting 2,000 jobs at risk at the one-time pioneering ethical cosmetics retailer, Reuters reported. Founded in Brighton, southern England, in 1976 by late environmentalist and human rights activist Anita Roddick, the Body Shop was famous for promoting natural, ethically-sourced products and rejecting animal testing.

Euro zone banks face a permanently changed risk landscape that requires lenders to alter how they operate, the European Central Bank's new top supervisor said in her inaugural speech on Monday, Reuters reported. Surging interest rates, rising geopolitical risk, quicker deposit movements, multiplying cyber attacks and climate risk are all changing the fundamental nature of the business, and lenders may not be sufficiently prepared, said Claudia Buch, who took over from Andrea Enria at the start of the year.

U.K. wage growth eased a little less than forecast in the fourth quarter, while unemployment unexpectedly ticked down, signaling a stubbornly tight labor market and reflecting still-significant inflationary pressures as the Bank of England weighs when to start cutting interest rates, the Wall Street Journal reported. Average pay growth, excluding bonuses, was 6.2% in the three months to December, down from 6.7% in the three-month period to November, according to data published Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics.

Swiss inflation eased to its lowest level in nearly two and a half years in January, official data showed on Tuesday, feeding expectations that the Swiss National Bank could cut interest rates in March, Reuters reported. Consumer prices rose by 1.3% in January compared with the same month last year, the lowest annual increase since October 2021, according to data from the Federal Statistical Office.

The EU adopted a law to set aside windfall profits made on frozen Russian central bank assets, it said on Monday, in a first concrete step towards the bloc's aim of using the money to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine, Reuters reported. The EU and the Group of Seven nations (G7) froze some 300 billion euros ($323 billion) of Russian central bank assets following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. The EU and G7 have been debating if and how these funds can be used for over a year.

Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports that, adjusted for the number of court session days, there were 24 fewer bankruptcies in January 2024 than in December 2023, CBS.nl reported. This is a decrease of 6 percent. However, there has been an upward trend in the number of bankruptcies for nearly two years. In January 2024, over 60 percent more businesses were declared bankrupt than one year previously. This is an increase of 138 businesses. The number of corporate bankruptcies (adjusted for court session days) fluctuates substantially, with rapidly alternating ups and downs.

The troubled used car supermarket Cazoo is scrambling for a lifeline as it sinks further into a funding crisis, the Telegraph reported. The online dealer hopes to persuade shareholders to agree to an urgent cash injection but is preparing contingency measures. A source involved in the discussions said all options are on the table, including new investors, a sale or break-up of the company, and asset sales. However, if fresh funds can’t be found then it will be forced to consider administration. A team of restructuring and insolvency experts is being called in to navigate the crisis.

Germany’s market for office buildings suffered its sharpest drop in two decades as higher financing costs and sluggish return-to-office trends soured investor appetite, Bloomberg News reported. The downturn accelerated in the fourth quarter with a 13% drop from the previous year, according to data published Monday by German banking association VDP. For the full year, prices slumped more than 10%, the most since records began in 2003, and the outlook is for further declines at the start of 2024.