Tens of thousands of French workers took to the streets Tuesday across the country, striking for pay hikes that keep up with rising inflation, the Associated Press reported. The industrial action came after weeks of walkouts that have hobbled French oil refineries and sparked gasoline shortages around the country. “It’s time to go back to work,” French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said Tuesday about people on strike in the French refineries of oil giant TotalEnergies.

The Bank of England on Tuesday said liability-driven investment funds were now better prepared to manage shocks like the one triggered by September's mini budget, and the risk of another "fire sale" dynamic in gilts had been significantly reduced, Reuters reported. "Taken as a whole, LDI funds are now significantly better prepared to manage shocks of this nature in the future," BoE Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said in a letter parliament's Treasury Select Committee.

German prosecutors have searched the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in connection with an ongoing investigation of the multibillion-euro tax fraud scheme known as "cum-ex", Deutsche Bank said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Germany's largest lender is one of many banks that prosecutors have raided in connection with the tax scheme that thrived more than a decade ago.

Enel is discussing with a pool of Italian banks to secure a credit line, worth up to 16 billion euros ($15.7 billion) to support Italy's biggest utility, Reuters reported. The facility would have a 70% guarantee from Italy's credit export agency SACE under a state-guarantee scheme to help Italian companies affected by surging energy prices, source added. Read more.

Monte dei Paschi di Siena's management and Italian Treasury officials are ready to revive talks with potential buyers once the world's oldest bank completes a 2.5 billion euro ($2.46 billion) share sale next month, Reuters reported. Italy has years to cut the state's 64% stake in Monte dei Paschi (MPS) under a deal with the European Union, but the Treasury is not expected to sit idle for long. Rome failed to meet an initial EU deadline when talks to sell MPS to UniCredit collapsed a year ago.

Britain's new finance minister Jeremy Hunt scrapped Prime Minister Liz Truss's economic plan and scaled back her vast energy support scheme on Monday, making a historic policy U-turn to try to stem a dramatic loss of investor confidence, Reuters reported. Truss's spokesman denied that Hunt was running the country after his new strategy sent the pound soaring and helped government bond prices start to recover from the rout that followed her government's Sept. 23 plan for unfunded tax cuts.

The European Union will not pay out the vast majority of 75 billion euros ($73 billion) worth of development funds earmarked for Poland through 2027 unless Warsaw fixes the country's courts, a spokesman for the bloc's executive said on Monday, Reuters reported. Citing a flawed judiciary, the Brussels-based European Commission has already frozen some 35 billion euros assigned to Poland from a shared economic EU stimulus plan aimed at helping economies recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Italy's Monte dei Paschi di Siena launched on Monday a new share sale, its seventh in 14 years, seeking to raise up to 2.5 billion euros ($2.4 billion) to fund its latest turnaround plan, Reuters reported. MPS, which is owned by the state following a 2017 bailout, is offering shareholders 374 new shares for each three shares owned at a price of 2 euros each. On Friday, Italian market regulator Consob set the shares' reference price at 2.0630 euro each, stripping out a theoretical price for subscription rights of 7.8371 euros each.

The three countries that helped Moscow to maintain crude exports in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine appear to be stepping back into the market for Russian barrels, with Turkey taking a lead role in the latest buying, Bloomberg News reported. A marked increase in the volume of crude on tankers that have yet to signal a final destination makes the task of monitoring Russia’s exports more complicated, but most of those vessels end up in India, with a smaller number heading further east to China.

Corporate insolvencies in the UK rose 16% in September compared to a year earlier as experts warn more firms will fold under the pressure of weak consumer demand and rising borrowing costs, Bloomberg News reported. The Insolvency Service said Friday that 1,679 companies registered for insolvency last month, up from 1,453 in September 2021. It was a reprieve from August when insolvencies shot up 43% on an annual basis. Still, companies face a tough winter amid Britain’s cost-of-living crisis and increasing interest rates.