Some holders of a $3 billion Russia bond received an overdue interest payment, signaling that the heavily sanctioned nation will once again sidestep a default, Bloomberg News reported. The $66 million interest payment started showing up in accounts on Thursday, according to two international bondholders, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The payment was in dollars, one of the people said. A third bondholder reached Thursday said they had yet to see the payment.

German business morale plummeted in March as companies worried about rising energy prices, driver shortages and the stability of supply chains in the wake of the war in Ukraine, pointing to a possible future recession, a survey showed on Friday, Reuters reported. The Ifo institute said its business climate index dropped to 90.8 in March from a downwardly revised 98.5 in February. A Reuters poll of analysts had pointed to a March reading of 94.2.

Italian billionaire Gianluigi Aponte’s Mediterranean Shipping Co. will take a minority stake in Moby SpA as the ailing ferry company aims to settle a dispute with creditors and restructure its debt, Bloomberg News reported. MSC, one of the world’s largest container shipping companies, will provide fresh funds to Moby to pay off the administrators of Tirrenia, a unit it bought out of insolvency in 2011, according to a joint statement late Thursday. The firms didn’t disclose the size of the capital increase.

An Indian-origin soft drinks businessman from central England has been banned from holding a company directorship for nine years after admitting inflating figures to acquire a loan under a Covid-19 pandemic support scheme, the Hindustan Times reported. Inderjit Singh Dadial, whose ban comes into effect from this week, was the sole director of Cali Juices Limited, a wholesaler of specialised soft drinks incorporated in 2019 with a registered address in Wolverhampton.

The European Commission will look into the question of energy price caps after an extensive debate on the topic pushed by Spain at the EU summit, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday, Reuters reported. Germany and many other countries are sceptical about market interventions against high energy prices, he told a news conference at the end of the two day EU summit. Earlier, a European Union source said Germany and the Netherlands had opposed the southern countries in a "tough" debate on the issue of price caps.

After losing two years to the COVID-19 pandemic, shopkeepers in the heart of the Turkish Riviera had hoped for a strong tourism season this year to help keep their businesses afloat. But Russia’s war in Ukraine is fast dampening their spirits, the Associated Press reported. “We’re trying to earn our bread through tourism, but it looks like the war has finished off this (tourism) season, too,” Devrim Akcay said outside his clothing shop in the resort town of Belek, along the Mediterranean coast’s Antalya province.

The European Union’s budget chief pushed back against the idea of raising new joint debt to weather the impact of the ongoing war in Ukraine and to finance the bloc’s defense and energy priorities, Bloomberg News reported. Instead, Johannes Hahn urged member states to use more than 1 trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) of EU funds available to cope with the current crisis. “Honestly, there is money and there is still flexibility to discuss the use of funds,” the budget commissioner said in an interview.

Across Europe, governments are slashing fuel taxes and doling out tens of billions to help consumers, truckers, farmers and others cope with spiking energy prices made worse by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it’s not enough for some whose livelihoods hinge on fuel, the Associated Press reported. Miguel Ángel Rodriguez was one of 200 concrete truck drivers who held a slow-driving protest around Madrid this week. He said filling up used to cost 1,600 euros ($1,760) a month, but he’s been forking out an extra 500 euros since the start of the year because of the rising price of diesel.

German retirees will get a hefty pension increase this year, a result largely of higher wages in Europe’s biggest economy as inflation has climbed sharply, the government said Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. The Labor Ministry said pensions will increase by 5.35% in the former West Germany on July 1 and by 6.12% in the formerly communist east. There was no increase in the west last year and an increase of 0.72% in the east as the economy was hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

Russian steel giant Severstal was racing against the clock on Wednesday to avoid becoming the country's first major corporate default since the Ukraine crisis began, with international payment lines snarled by sanctions, Reuters reported. Severstal, whose main shareholder Alexey Mordashov is one of a number of wealthy Russians now sanctioned by the European Union, has until the end of the day to get an already overdue $12.6 million loan 'coupon' payment to its creditors.