The International Monetary Fund is tapping for a key role in talks with Ukraine the economist who led negotiations with Argentina to rescue its record loan, as the lender of last resort seeks to help the European country upended by Russia’s invasion, Bloomberg News reported. Julie Kozack is set to oversee and guide the staff team dealing with Ukraine after she becomes a deputy director of the European department next month, according to the fund.

Endo International Plc filed for bankruptcy yesterday after reaching a $6 billion deal with some of its creditors, as the U.S. drugmaker seeks to settle thousands of lawsuits over its alleged role in the country's opioid epidemic, Reuters reported. The pharmaceutical company is the latest to file for chapter 11 to address opioid claims. Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, filed in September 2019, while Mallinckrodt Plc, a generic opioid manufacturer, recently emerged from bankruptcy.

The U.K.’s annual rate of inflation moved into double digits in July and is set to rise even higher by the end of the year, heaping greater pressure on stretched household budgets and threatening a lengthy economic contraction, the Wall Street Journal reported. That pickup in inflation has been replicated in other parts of Europe, even as consumer prices have started to slow in the U.S. That is because energy prices have continued to accelerate across Europe as Russia withholds supplies of natural gas, with the continent facing a possible crunch this winter.

Uniper, Germany’s largest importer of natural gas, reported on Wednesday a loss of more than 12 billion euros (or $12.2 billion) for the first half of the year as the company coped with dwindling supplies of natural gas provided by Russia, the New York Times reported. Uniper said that the losses were a direct result of having to pay inflated prices for gas on the open market in order to make up for the Russian shortfall.

Germany’s RWE AG has turned to the debt market for funding, as Europe faces its worst energy crunch in decades, Bloomberg News reported. The company saw over 2 billion euros ($2 billion) of investor demand for at least 500 million euros of three-year bonds on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified as they aren’t authorized to speak publicly. It’s RWE’s first venture into Europe’s debt market since May and adds to the region’s busiest day for new deals in two months.

Factories in Russian-occupied areas of the Ukraine were packed up and moved on trains and trucks, and are being resurrected in the west, the New York Times reported. Manufacturers are creating jobs and hunting for skilled workers. Now closer to Poland — Ukraine’s gateway to Germany and western Europe — the reborn businesses are forging ties with the European Union, which Ukraine hopes to join soon. “The main motivation for them to come here is that they stay in Ukraine,” said Andriy Moskalenko, the deputy mayor of Lviv responsible for economic affairs.

Swedish furniture giant IKEA has decided to liquidate its Russian unit, limited liability company IKEA Dom, further scaling back its operations after more than a decade-long presence in the country, a corporate record showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Scores of consumer brands suspended operations in Russia after Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, with H&M, IKEA and Nike among the companies to have announced plans for a permanent exit.

UK job vacancies fell for the first time since August 2020 as real wages dropped at the sharpest pace on record, indicating a tightening inflation squeeze on consumers and businesses, Bloomberg News reported. The number of jobs employers are seeking to fill fell by 19,800 to 1.27 million in the quarter through July, the Office for National Statistics said Tuesday. Pay excluding bonuses and adjusted for inflation fell by 3% in the three months through June, the most since records began in 2001.

Britain has launched a scheme to extend tariff cuts to hundreds of products, such as clothes and food, from developing countries, part of London's post-Brexit efforts to set up systems to replace those run by the European Union, Reuters reported. In June, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he wanted to start a new trade system to reduce costs and simplify rules for 65 developing countries to replace the EU's Generalised System of Preferences, which applies import duties at reduced rates.

UK-based Altera Infrastructure has entered a Chapter 11 bankruptcy process in the U.S. to address its debt of over $1.5 billion, Offshore-Energy.biz reported. Formerly a part of Teekay, Altera Infrastructure is based in Westhill, Scotland and it is a supplier of infrastructure assets to the offshore energy industry. In a statement on Monday, the company said that it has executed a restructuring support agreement (the RSA) with approximately 71 percent of its funded debt obligations, which includes an investment management company Brookfield and a super-majority of its bank lenders.