British finance minister Jeremy Hunt set out plans on Monday to freeze and then cut the number of government workers to save up to 1 billion pounds ($1.2 billion), an attempt to appease some in his own Conservative Party noisily demanding tax cuts, Reuters reported. While admitting "the level of tax is too high", Hunt sought at the governing party's annual conference to turn attention towards efforts to boost public sector productivity in Britain, saying that was the way to reduce ballooning public spending.

Bank of England rate-setter Catherine Mann warned against letting up in the fight against inflation as she disparaged the central bank’s forecasts and predicted permanently higher interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Mann, who is seen as the most hawkish rate-setter on the Monetary Policy Committee, said that interest rates have only just reached restrictive territory after the BOE halted its hiking cycle last month.

The chair of the board of Alecta, Sweden's largest pension fund provider, resigned on Monday following months of questions over the company's loss-making investments in U.S. banks and a Swedish property group, Reuters reported. Alecta, the subject of two ongoing probes by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) over risk taking, said in a statement its deputy board chair, Jan-Olof Jacke, will lead the board until a permanent candidate is elected. "In a situation where there has been too much focus on my person, I have decided to resign," Ingrid Bonde said in a statement.

Ukraine's central bank said it would bring in a more flexible exchange rate from Tuesday, relaxing the official peg it has had throughout the war with Russia in a move to boost the economy, Reuters reported. Central Bank Governor Andriy Pyshnyi said financial stability in Ukraine had climbed to a "historic maximum", allowing the central bank to start easing wartime restrictions in a bid to help the economy and businesses. "Compared with July last year, the situation is radically different," Pyshnyi told an online media briefing.

British finance minister Jeremy Hunt on Monday will announce a rise in the minimum wage in his annual Conservative party conference speech, where he is expected to ignore a growing clamour for tax cuts within his party, Reuters reported. The extracts of the speech released by the party made no reference to taxes after Conservative lawmakers and even senior minister Michael Gove have called for tax cuts ahead of an election expected next year. On Saturday, Hunt ruled out near-term tax cuts ahead of a mid-year fiscal statement due on Nov.

Euro-area core inflation eased to its slowest pace in a year, supporting expectations that the European Central Bank will keep interest rates on hold to gauge the impact of its unprecedented campaign of hikes, Bloomberg News reported. Underlying price gains, which strip out energy and food costs, came in at 4.5% in September, Eurostat said Friday. That’s down from 5.3% in August and much less than the 4.8% median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Germany has welcomed a show of support from China for the G20 debt restructuring framework for poorer countries in a joint statement after their financial dialogue in Frankfurt over the weekend, Reuters reported. "We welcome the fact that the Chinese side is also committed to this in our Joint Statement, because solutions are inconceivable without China as such an important player in world politics," German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said on Sunday, after his meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng.

More than 5,000 new businesses were set up in Wales this summer, according to new research from R3, the UK’s insolvency and restructuring trade body, BusinessNewsWales.com reported. R3’s analysis of data provided by Creditsafe shows there were 5,014 start-ups in Wales over the summer months – an increase of 7.1% on last year’s figure of 4,683. Welsh start-up numbers peaked in August of this year, when 1,693 firms were launched, after falling between June (1,672) and July (1,649). This was a change on the trend in 2022, when numbers decreased during the summer months.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is exiting Russia by selling its operations there to a new crypto exchange known as CommEX, the Wall Street Journal reported. “As we look toward the future, we recognize that operating in Russia is not compatible with Binance's compliance strategy,” said Noah Perlman, Binance's chief compliance officer. Binance said on Wednesday that "off-boarding" Russian customers would take up to a year. It didn't give financial details of the deal.

Hungary's central bank could not cope with curbing inflation so the government stepped in and helped rein in price growth with its own tools, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff said on Thursday, turning up the heat on the bank, Reuters reported. Hungary's inflation, which peaked above an annual 25% in the first quarter, is still the European Union's highest at 16.4% in August but is expected to retreat to around 7% by December. High inflation has come at a big cost, as the economy could end up in recession for the whole of 2023.