Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) has won the auction for Morrisons with a 7 billion pound ($9.5 billion) bid, paving the way for the U.S. private equity firm to take control of Britain's fourth-biggest supermarket group, Reuters reported. The board of Morrisons recommended CD&R's 287 pence per share bid on Saturday, hours after its bid beat a consortium led by Softbank owned Fortress Investment Group, which had made an offer worth just a penny less per share at 286 pence.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis denied any wrongdoing on Sunday in connection with an international investigative report that listed him among current and former world politicians and businessmen that it says have used offshore financial structures, Reuters reported. The Pandora Papers report, by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, said Babis moved $22 million through offshore companies to buy an estate on the French Riviera in 2009 while keeping his ownership secret. The report did not say the transactions broke the law.

The Czech central bank pledged to keep raising borrowing costs after lifting interest rates by the most in nearly a quarter century, pushing the koruna higher and angering the government with the European Union’s most aggressive anti-inflationary campaign, Bloomberg News reported. Policy makers increased the benchmark rate by 75 basis points to 1.5% on Thursday, exceeding expectations for a half-point increase.

Britain has temporarily exempted parts of the carbon dioxide (CO2) industry from competition law to help provide further security of the gas's supplies to businesses in the country, Reuters reported. Britain last week warned food producers to prepare for a 400% rise in carbon dioxide prices after extending emergency state support as rising costs of wholesale natural gas led to fears of poultry and meat shortages.

The European Commission on Thursday proposed extending looser state aid rules for virus-hit companies for six months to June 2022 in a bid to slowly wean them off the billions of euros provided by governments across the European Union, Reuters reported. The EU executive, tasked with ensuring a level playing field in the 27-country bloc, also proposed two new measures to encourage investment support and solvency support for a limited time to help Europe rebound from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After 18 months during which it subsidized 11.6 million jobs, Britain’s government-funded furlough program ended on Thursday, along with some other pandemic relief measures, the New York Times reported. While it marked another milestone in Britain’s efforts to put the pandemic in the past, the country is experiencing a slowing economic recovery and increasingly severe supply chain disruptions.

As a critical shortage of truck drivers has caused gas pumps to run dry across the country and disrupted the lives of thousands, Britons and their leaders in Parliament are delivering a plaintive message to the drivers: We need you, the New York Times reported. The government is sending out a letter to nearly 1 million people who hold a license to drive a heavy goods vehicle, urging them back onto the road. And it is relaxing visa restrictions for thousands of foreign workers, in the hope of luring them into temporary work in Britain.

Switzerland proposed updated rules to ensure major banks hold enough liquidity to absorb shocks, but the draft changes will cost banks little or nothing in additional capital and liquidity holdings, government documents showed on Thursday, Reuters reported. The proposed revisions, which were sent into consultation on Thursday, aim to ensure that systemically important banks (SIBs) -- which include Credit Suisse and UBS -- remain resilient under various stress scenarios, including in some cases not adequately covered by current rules, the government said.

A U.S. judge said Germany's Allianz SE must face investor claims it wrongly "abandoned" the investment strategies it promised to use on hedge funds that suffered massive losses as the COVID-19 pandemic shook markets early last year, Reuters reported. In an 81-page decision, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in Manhattan said that investors could try to show Allianz was negligent and lacked good faith in managing its Structured Alpha funds. She also dismissed some state law-based claims.

Insurers operating in the Irish market have paid out €130 million to date on business interruption claims stemming from the Covid-19 crisis, fuelled by a landmark court rulings and pressure from the Central Bank, according to the regulator, the Irish Times reported. The Central Bank wrote to a number of insurers in February pressing them to pay out on valid business interruption claims, following landmark court judgments in Britain and Ireland in favour of companies affected by the economic shock caused by Covid-19.