Former British Prime Minister David Cameron repeatedly contacted senior ministers over a four-month period in 2020 to lobby for the now-failed, supply-chain finance firm Greensill Capital, according to documents published on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Cameron’s involvement in efforts to secure access for Greensill Capital to the government’s pandemic funding schemes have fueled wider questions about lobbyists’ influence over British government decision-making.

A ramp-up in debt sales in Europe, led by Germany’s sale of its first 30-year green bonds, sent yields jumping across the region, Bloomberg News reported. The country racked up record orders of more than 38.9 billion euros ($47 billion) for its 6 billion-euro offering. The sale comes alongside placements from the Netherlands and the U.K., helping push conventional German 30-year yields to their highest since 2019. Benchmark Italian yields headed toward 1% for the first time since September as traders bet an economic recovery will spur inflation.

Bickering in the European Union’s most politically volatile member state is threatening to delay the approval of the bloc’s 800 billion-euro ($973 billion) pandemic-relief package, Bloomberg News reported. Romania’s ruling coalition and opposition are far from a consensus on ratifying the Recovery Fund this month in parliament, where a two-thirds majority is required. The country is one of seven EU states yet to sign off on the financing and allow disbursements to coronavirus-battered economies to start. The bloc wants all national parliaments to ratify the decision by June.

European governments are acting to limit hedge funds’ participation in the market for new sovereign-bond issuance, following a surge in demand from the firms, the Wall Street Journal reported. The pushback was prompted by unusually large orders placed by hedge funds for new bonds, which can then potentially be sold—sometimes within hours—to the European Central Bank for a profit, bankers, investors and a government official said. Order books, which track demand for new bonds and help determine the prices, have ballooned since hedge funds began to pile into this trade.

Landlords have lost a legal challenge against the restructuring at high street fashion chain New Look, in a major setback to their efforts to curb what they regard as misuse of insolvency laws, the Financial Times reported. A group of four landlords, including Land Securities and British Land plus the new owners of Manchester’s giant Trafford Centre, had challenged New Look’s use of a company voluntary arrangement to reset its rents for the second time in three years and to write off rent arrears.

If Sweden’s government gets its way, Bromma airport on the western edge of Stockholm will shut down and be used to build around 30,000 new homes, helping to ease a housing shortage that has sent prices in the capital soaring. Sweden is not alone in seeking innovative ways to boost the supply of housing and, ultimately, reduce a build-up of mortgage debt that threatens the wider economy, Reuters reported. In many big European cities, prices have been rising for decades, pushed higher by a cocktail of low interest rates, land shortages and construction that cannot keep pace with demand.

CDC Group, the U.K. government’s development investment arm, is taking a step to help bridge what it estimates is a funding gap of as much as $31 billion that Africa’s agriculture and food industry faces each year, Bloomberg News reported. The 73-year-old institution is channeling $100 million to small-holder African farmers through export and trading company ETG, and is seeking other partners to help it deploy more capital to the sector.

Lufthansa is working with Deutsche Bank and Bank of America to sound out investors about a capital increase worth roughly 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion), possibly as soon as June, Reuters reported. The final size and timing of the rights issue to repay state aid Lufthansa received during the pandemic will be subject to market conditions and the German airline is expected to opt for a June/July or September/October window.

The Bank of England does not expect to see a wave of bankruptcies among British firms when the government ends its coronavirus emergency support for the economy, BoE Chief Economist Andy Haldane said on Friday, Reuters reported. Many debts racked up recently by companies are spread over long durations “which increases the chances of them being able to be paid back and therefore bankruptcy is not picking up very much from current relatively subdued levels,” Haldane said.