German landlord Adler Group SA is preparing to overhaul its debt in the UK after getting support from a “sufficient majority” of its creditors for a deal, Bloomberg News reported. The company said it created a new English subsidiary — called AGPS BondCo Plc — as a principal debtor of all its bonds, in a move that will allow it to file a restructuring plan in England, according to a statement. Adler has been negotiating for months with its creditors after it was targeted by a short seller and hit by a slowdown in German property transactions.

Britain and the European Union have not yet entered a more intense phase of negotiations - the so-called negotiating "tunnel" - in their talks to amend post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said, Reuters reported. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the two sides are preparing to enter the more intense phase of the long-standing negotiations as soon as next week.

The Bank of England is not at the point in its interest rate-rising cycle where it needs to worry about the risk of over-tightening, Monetary Policy Committee member Catherine Mann said on Thursday, Reuters reported. "You have a lot of different ways of looking at it. My reading is we're not there yet," Mann said. The BoE raised its main interest rate to 3.5% in December from 3%; Mann voted for a bigger increase to 3.75%.

Britain’s foreign minister is meeting politicians and businesspeople in Belfast on Wednesday, bearing good news: The U.K. and the European Union are inching closer to settling a post-Brexit trade dispute that has brought economic headaches and political turmoil to Northern Ireland, the Associated Press reported. James Cleverly is traveling to Belfast two days after Britain and the EU made a significant breakthrough, striking a data-sharing agreement that will give the EU access to real-time information about goods moving to Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.

French unions and opposition parties on Wednesday said they would fight hard to try to derail a highly unpopular plan to make people work longer before receiving a pension, Reuters reported. President Emmanuel Macron's government, in turn, said it wasn't afraid of a nationwide call for strikes and protests on Jan. 19 and would carry on with its plan. The French will have to work two years longer to age 64 before retiring, if the reform, announced yesterday, is adopted by parliament. They will also need to work longer to get a full pension.

German neobank Ruuky has filed for insolvency after failing to raise fresh funds, FinExtra.com reported. Launched three years ago under the brand name Pockid, the firm pivoted a year later under the new name Ruuky, offering an interactive banking app, current account and debit card for European teenagers. While the business claims to have amassed a loyal customer base, counting 250,000 app registrations, it has fallen victim to an ongoing drought in VC funding. The startup had previously raised €4 million from Cavalry Venture and Vorwerk Ventures at a valuation of €16 million.

Barclays is joining forces with an insolvency specialist to try to recover millions of pounds of misappropriated loans advanced under the UK government’s Covid-19 bounceback scheme, the Irish Times reported. The bank is among the lenders that provided loans of up to £50,000 (€56,000) to small companies at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, which were guaranteed by the government. About £46 billion was given to companies with only minimal eligibility checks to encourage banks to lend quickly.

The chief executive of German utility Uniper SE plans to resign this year after the company, hit hard by Russia’s decision to halt most of its natural-gas exports to Europe, was nationalized by the government, the Wall Street Journal reported. Klaus-Dieter Maubach, who was appointed to the position in 2021, will exercise a special right of termination due to the change of ownership, the company said Tuesday. Uniper’s Chief Operating Officer David Bryson will also depart, using the same right.

Nearly 3.5 million people — or about one in 12 working-age adults in Britain — who have long-term health conditions are not working or looking for work, the New York Times reported. The number ballooned during the first two years of the pandemic when more than half a million more people reported they had a long-term sickness, with physical and mental health conditions, according to analysis by economists at the Bank of England.

More than 1,000 firms could go bust this year if the economic downturn worsens, racking up combined losses of €4bn, according to PwC’s latest insolvency barometer, the Independent reported. Construction, real estate, hospitality and arts businesses are the most at risk, the consulting firm said. A total of 527 companies went bust last year, 39pc up on 2021, when insolvencies were artificially lowered due to government supports. Irish firms that failed in 2022 owed €1.8bn between them, with the average debt per small- or medium-sized firm amounting to around €2m.