Two months after many investors were caught off guard by the writedown of Credit Suisse Group AG’s Additional Tier 1 bonds, the securities are once again at the center of a market debate. This time the divide is over whether the event will trigger an insurance payout, Bloomberg News reported. Funds including FourSixThree Capital and Diameter Capital Partners have been buying credit default swaps linked to another set of junior Credit Suisse bonds, betting that the derivatives panel tasked with overseeing the market will rule that a credit event has occurred.

The Bank of England raised its key interest rate for the 12th consecutive time and signaled more increases are possible as it released less gloomy forecasts for the U.K. economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The central bank raised the rate to 4.5% from 4.25% on Thursday, having begun to tighten its monetary policy in December 2021 when borrowing costs stood at 0.1%. The key rate is now at its highest level since October 2008, while the cumulative move over 12 steps is the largest since the late 1980s.

Czech citizens will likely pay more for beer and medicine while businesses will face higher corporate taxes as part of a package of dozens of measures designed to keep the ballooning budget deficit under control, the government said today, the Associated Press. Prime Minister Petr Fiala said the proposed cuts, tax increases and austerity measures are necessary because the pace of the debt rise is “threatening.” Fiala said the measures should reduce the budget deficit for 2024 by 94 billion Czechs crowns ($4.4 billion) and for 2025 by 148 billion.

A European Union court toppled Germany’s massive bailout of Deutsche Lufthansa AG at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, backing Ryanair Holdings Plc’s claims that the package unfairly tilted competition toward its rival, Bloomberg News reported. Terms of a €6 billion-euro ($6.6 billion) recapitalization approved by the European Commission were too favorable to Lufthansa, and demands that Europe’s biggest network carrier forfeit take-off and landing rights in Frankfurt and Munich were structured in a way that didn’t provide a realistic chance for competition, the court ruled.

The European Central Bank will keep raising borrowing costs until it sees core inflation decline sustainably, ECB board member Isabel Schnabel said on Tuesday, adding market expectations for rate cuts were misplaced, Reuters reported. Schnabel backed the ECB's decision last week to slow down the pace of rate hikes but said these will continue until it sees a sustained fall in core prices, which typically exclude food and energy due to their wild swings.

Sweden’s property crisis worsened after one of the country’s biggest commercial landlords took steps to conserve cash and put its focus on selling assets to plug a funding gap, Bloomberg News reported. SBB postponed a dividend and scrapped plans to sell shares in the wake of a credit rating downgrade to junk. Like many other Swedish property companies, the landlord — formally named Samhallsbyggnadsbolaget i Norden AB — is scrambling to refinance debt, but higher interest rates and investor concerns have closed off many options.

A total of 1,644 companies in Romania went insolvent in the first quarter of 2023 (Q1), a number similar to the one in Q1 2022, when 1,610 insolvent companies were registered, Romanian-Insider.com reported. Of the companies that went into insolvency, 23 are impactful companies, totalling over 1,950 employees, fixed assets worth over RON 589 million (EUR 120 mln) and a total turnover of RON 805 million (EUR 163 mln), according to an analysis by CITR, the insolvency and restructuring market leader in Romania.

An Irish High Court judge has dismissed a challenge by a company whose shareholders include rugby star Ronan O'Gara and businessman Michael O'Flynn to an order relating to the personal insolvency arrangement in favour of fellow shareholder John O'Driscoll, the Irish Examiner reported. The application was regarded as a new bid to set aside the PIA and seek a new hearing.

German industrial production fell more than expected in March, partly due to a weak performance by the automotive sector, spurring again recession fears in Europe's largest economy, Reuters reported. Production decreased by 3.4% on the previous month following a slightly revised increase of 2.1% in February, the federal statistical office said on Monday. In a Reuters poll, analysts had pointed to a 1.3% fall. "After a buoyant performance by industrial production at the beginning of the year, there was an unexpectedly sharp decline in March," the economics ministry said.

Investors shouldn’t count on the European Central Bank’s unprecedented bout of interest-rate increases ending in July, as the majority of economists currently predicts, according to Governing Council member Martins Kazaks, Bloomberg News reported. “I don’t think it is that clear yet,” the hawkish Latvian official told Bloomberg on Monday by phone.