As much as £20 billion of taxpayer-backed Covid loans may have to be written off because of defaults by struggling borrowers, insolvency practitioners have warned, the London Times reported. The resignation of Lord Agnew of Oulton, the counter-fraud minister, has prompted an increased scrutiny of losses to criminals in the government’s emergency schemes, but Azets, an accountancy firm, has warned that these will be eclipsed by the hit to the public purse from legitimate borrowers going bust.

Sweden will phase out the majority of its current pandemic support measures, with the decision coinciding with a lifting of most restrictions from Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported. The support measures to companies will stay in place through February, Finance Minister Mikael Damberg told a news conference in Stockholm on Tuesday. “Now is the time for normality and not least a more normal budget process,” he said. The biggest Nordic nation became an outlier at the start of the pandemic due to its relatively hands-off Covid strategy.

European electricity prices jumped after the region’s biggest power producer cut its nuclear output target for a second time in a month, the latest sign that this winter’s energy crisis is far from over, Reuters reported. Electricite de France SA said its nuclear production could fall this year to levels not seen since 1990, and Morgan Stanley says there’s a “meaningful likelihood” of a production cut for 2023. The shortfall has forced France to import electricity at times, tightening supplies in neighboring countries used to relying on the nuclear giant to keep the lights on.

February 9 China Eases Property Loan Curbs as Housing Market Slumps China eased a year-long cap on loans for the real estate sector to fund public rental housing, the latest bid by authorities to tackle a slumping property market, Bloomberg News reported. Bank loans to fund low-cost rental projects will no longer be subject to regulatory curbs, the People’s Bank of China said in a statement on Tuesday. The rules required banks to trim their loan exposure to the property sector to a certain level.

Ukraine is betting that foreign aid and improved tax collection during an economic rebound will help it weather the financial tensions resulting from warnings by the U.S. and its allies of a potential Russian invasion, Bloomberg News reported. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the U.S. and western media are undermining Ukraine’s economy by spreading “information panic” about the risk of a Russian attack. The government in Kyiv insists the more than 100,000 Russian troops massed at the borders aren’t enough for a full-scale invasion -- and the Kremlin denies any such plans.

The European Union is successfully stepping up the fight to fend off risky foreign business takeovers from nations like China that could endanger national security or threaten control over essential sectors like energy, transport and health care, the Associated Press reported. The unprecedented legislation creating a new area of coordination in the 27-nation EU makes the bloc much better equipped to protect strategic homegrown businesses, a top French official said.

Rapid action is needed to update how cross-border financial services are scrutinised and consumers protected as the sector becomes digitalised with "Big Tech" playing an increased role, European Union regulators said on Monday, Reuters reported. People are turning to social media and using smartphones to buy and sell shares, move money around bank accounts and make payments, a trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving regulators playing catch-up.

KPMG has been sued for 1.3 billion pounds ($1.77 billion) by the liquidators of Carillion for missing "red flags" during audits of the construction giant, in one of the largest claims against one of the world's top accountants, Reuters reported. Britain's Official Receiver, part of the Insolvency Service, which is liquidating the former blue-chip group, alleged that negligent failures by KPMG to detect misstatements in the accounts of Carillion - which collapsed in 2018 under 7 billion pounds of debt - cost claimants "extensive loss and damage".

Prices are rising steeply in the United States and across Europe, driven by rising energy costs and supply-chain issues triggered by the easing of pandemic rules. But in Britain, there is a fear that sharply escalating heat and electricity bills, combined with food inflation, will push millions more into poverty, the New York Times reported. The Bank of England lifted interest rates on Thursday for the second time in two months — moving before the Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank.

Bondholders of fertilizer producer CF Industries Holdings Inc. agreed to amend the company’s debt covenants, clearing a path for it to restructure its troubled U.K. operations, Bloomberg News reported. Bondholders agreed to let CF Industries remove its U.K. units from the definition of a “substantial subsidiary” in exchange for a $2 fee per $1,000 of principal on four different outstanding bond issues, the company said in a regulatory filing Tuesday. In a previous filing, the Deerfield, Illinois-based manufacturer said it sought to change the definition so that restructuring its U.K.