The new head of Ukraine's central bank said on Monday the bank's main tasks remained the same, including strengthening the bank's independence, Reuters reported. "The obligations remain unchanged," Andriy Pyshnyi, who was appointed last month, told a news conference at which he said that Ukraine's banking system was stable.

Improving transparency of 'non-banks' such as pension funds is a first step in applying lessons from turmoil in Britain's government bond market, Bank of England executive director Sarah Breeden said on Monday, Reuters reported. The central bank had to intervene in UK bond markets in September after the 1.6 trillion pound Liability Driven Investment funds (LDI) sector - used by pension funds to help ensure future payouts - struggled to meet collateral calls after the previous government's tax cut plans triggered a market rout.

Growth in French mortgage lending slowed to the weakest pace this year in September as the European Central Bank’s rate hikes began to dent demand in the euro area’s second-largest economy, Bloomberg News reported. Outstanding lending for home purchases grew 6.2% from a year earlier after rising 6.3% in August, and the Bank of France said early indicators show a further slowdown to 6% in October. The average interest rate for new housing loans is estimated at 1.79% in October -- the most expensive since 2016.

German finance watchdog BaFin has told Deutsche Bank to take specific measures to improve efforts to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing or face fines, the latest rebuke in regulatory proceedings against the bank that started in 2018, Reuters reported. BaFin said in a brief statement on its website late on Friday it had ordered the bank on Sept. 28 to take specific measures or else face fines, part of regulatory requirements that were imposed on the bank from September 2018. The regulator declined to give further details.

Garrett Motion Inc., a maker of turbochargers and other automotive equipment, is exploring strategic options including a sale, Bloomberg News reported. The Rolle, Switzerland-based company is working with an adviser on a possible sale. Garrett is expected to attract interest from companies looking to enhance their electric-vehicle operations. Garrett, originally known as Honeywell Transportation Systems, was spun off in 2018. It filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2020 after struggling with loan repayments.

The signs were already there. In January this year, Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, one of Europe’s largest and oldest department store chains, asked for and received 220 million euros of government financial aid. That was in addition to the 460 million euro loan the business had already received from the German government, due to difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic, WWD.com reported. In early October this year, the chain’s management said it was terminating a previously agreed deal it had made with union representatives. Difficult times called for radical restructuring, they said.

Energy giant Uniper posted a net loss of around $39.3 billion for the first nine months of the year—one of the biggest in Germany’s corporate history—highlighting the financial fallout from Russia’s decision to throttle natural-gas deliveries to Europe, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company, which is soon to be nationalized by Germany in an attempt to stabilize it and protect its customers, said Thursday it was finalizing the details of additional state-support measures.

The Bank of England’s policymakers raised interest rates on Thursday by the largest amount since 1989, intensifying their battle against inflation even as the central bank predicted that the British economy would enter a “prolonged” recession, the New York Times reported. The bank lifted its key policy rate by three-quarters of a point, ramping up its effort to tighten financial conditions and taking the rate to 3 percent, the highest since November 2008.

Out-of-pocket creditors have been in a forgiving mood since Covid-19 shuttered businesses in 2020, but that looks to be changing, Bloomberg News reported. A form of legal action in which creditors can apply to have companies shut down and their assets sold to pay debts has become increasingly common. Firms were protected from some forms of creditor action by legislation brought in during the pandemic, but those restrictions ended earlier this year.

The Czech Republic held borrowing costs at the highest level since 1999 as the central bank expects a looming recession to curb the worst inflation in three decades, Bloomberg News reported. Policy makers left the benchmark rate at 7%, keeping it stable for a third meeting after the bank’s new leadership halted a year of rapid monetary tightening. The bank also said it will maintain its intervention policy of preventing excessive koruna swings, which has helped the currency outperform regional peers this year.