The UK Treasury is set to transfer more than £11 billion ($12.4 billion) to the Bank of England this fiscal year to cover projected losses in its bond-buying program, Bloomberg News reported. The capital transfer was detailed in an update to the “Central Government Supply Estimates” published on Tuesday by the Treasury. The new £11.175 billion injection is listed under “assistance to financial institutions - payment to the Bank of England.” Parliament is set to debate the contents of the statement on Monday. The BOE is to begin unwinding its quantitative easing program next month.

British food prices rose at the fastest pace since 1980 last month, driving inflation back to a 40-year high and heaping pressure on the embattled government to balance the books without gutting help for the nation’s poorest residents, the Associated Press reported. Food prices jumped 14.6% in the year through September, led by the soaring cost of staples such as meat, bread, milk and eggs, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday. That pushed consumer price inflation back to 10.1%, the highest since early 1982 and equal to the level last reached in July.

A surge in bad loans awaits UK banks as higher interest rates saddle homeowners with an estimated £52 billion ($58.6 billion) of added mortgage payments over the next three years, an analyst warned as he downgraded his ratings on several lenders, Reuters reported. The jump in costs will help push the personal debt service burden toward about 10% of post-tax income and further into the “dangerous territory” traditionally associated with large increases in impairments, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Ed Firth wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.

A plan to give the British government power to override watchogs would raise "serious concerns" about the ability of regulators to oversee the City as a global financial centre, Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. While Britain remains home to Europe's biggest financial sector after its exit from the European Union, banks are keen for regulators to help boost the City's global competitiveness.

Ireland's central bank is to ease mortgage-lending limits to allow first-time property buyers to borrow up to four times their income, in a move it said could help meet growing building costs but could also modestly push up prices, Reuters reported. The central bank introduced limits in 2015 capping how much banks can lend for the purchase of a home relative to its value and the borrower's income in a bid to prevent a repeat of excessive lending that devastated the economy over a decade ago.

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.