Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Thursday that Moscow would impose a moratorium on bankruptcies for a period of six months starting on Friday, Reuters reported. Read more.

Investors are bracing for more losses in Russian debt as expulsion from key indexes in the wake of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine hits an already trampled market, Bloomberg News reported. Russia’s government and corporate bonds are set on Thursday to be removed from the closely-followed JPMorgan Chase & Co. suite of emerging-market bond indexes, known as EMBI, leaving some money managers whose funds track the gauge with little choice but to sell or write down their holdings.

Inflation continued to surge across Europe's biggest economies this month while growth took a hit, leaving households poorer as they picked up the bill for soaring energy costs in the wake of Russia's shock invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported. Price growth hit multi-decade highs in Italy, France, Germany and Spain in March, intensifying a policy dilemma for the European Central Bank, which needs to fight the price surge but must also avoid choking off already fading growth.

A proposed multi-billion pound claim brought by thousands of asset managers, pension funds and financial institutions against major banks over alleged foreign exchange (forex) rigging has been blocked by a London court, Reuters reported. London's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), which had been considering the case against JPMorgan, Citigroup, Barclays, UBS and NatWest since last July, ruled on Thursday the case was not suitable to proceed as a U.S.-style, opt-out class action.

European Union lawmakers were set on Thursday to back tougher safeguards for transfers of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, in the latest sign that regulators are tightening up on the freewheeling sector, Reuters reported. Two committees in the European Parliament have thrashed out cross-party compromises to be voted on. Crypto exchange Coinbase Global Inc. has warned the rules would usher in a surveillance regime that stifles innovation. The $2.1 trillion crypto sector is still subject to patchy regulation across the world.

Regulators are looking to update rules, which target companies abusing their market power and those setting up illegal cartels, to make them more efficient, EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Under the rules, known as Regulation 1/2003 and in force since 2004, the European Commission has taken on Alphabet unit Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Intel and imposed billions of euros in fines.

Europe's economy is increasingly strained by Russia's war in Ukraine as growth stalls, confidence plummets and inflation soars, data and warnings from policymakers made clear on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Sanctions on Russia following its invasion last month have pushed energy prices to record highs across the continent, sapping confidence and raising the risk of another recession, even before some states have recovered from a COVID-fuelled downturn.

Amid the mayhem provoked in the world energy market by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Spain and Portugal have emerged in a strategically advantageous position as an “energy island” in Europe, with a relatively low reliance on Russian natural gas, the Associated Press reported. Leaders in renewable energy thanks to solar, wind and hydraulic power, Spain and Portugal are now poised to reap the benefits of long-term investments in liquefied natural gas, or LNG.

Credit Suisse Group AG shareholders proposed a special audit over the collapse of a group of supply chain finance funds it ran with now-defunct Greensill Capital, after the bank refused to publish an internal report on the matter, Bloomberg News reported. The lender urged shareholders to vote against the proposal at the bank’s annual general meeting next month, saying it could complicate efforts to recover investor money that remains locked up more than a year after it was frozen. The audit is being proposed by the Ethos Foundation and seven Swiss pension funds.

The president of Britain’s Supreme Court said Wednesday that he and a colleague were stepping down from their roles on Hong Kong’s highest court because the administration of the Chinese territory had “departed from values of political freedom and freedom of expression,” the New York Times reported. Their resignations will heighten scrutiny of Hong Kong’s British-style legal system, which the former British colony kept even after it returned to Chinese control in 1997.