Poland’s central bank moved to resolve the biggest threat to the country’s financial industry, offering commercial lenders help in converting $30 billion of Swiss-franc loans into zloty, Bloomberg News reported. The banks asked the monetary authority to step in after a multitude of lawsuits over the loans forced them into mounting provisions. But the stiff conditions attached to aid, which include halting dividends and shoring up capital, are already facing a pushback from the industry, meaning the deal may take time to hash out.

Italian chain Prezzo will permanently close 22 restaurants after being bought out of pre-pack administration by private equity firm Cain International, CityAM.com reported. As a result of the deal, 22 of the high street stalwart’s 178 restaurants will not reopen. Cain said that 216 of its 2,900 jobs would be lost. The deal came after Prezzo was forced to go into administration after failing to reach agreement with landlords on rent payments.

For years, landlords have had the upper hand in London’s real estate market, pushing up rents as businesses clamored for prime locations near offices, tourism hot spots and transport hubs and as the city’s population grew and grew. Restaurants were often locked into leases with clauses that allowed the rent to only go up. Retailers faced increasingly exorbitant rents. Over the course of a year, the pandemic has brought a halt to this arrangement, shifting the power balance between commercial property tenants and landlords, the New York Times reported.

EU antitrust regulators have suspended their investigation into Aon’s $30 billion bid for Willis Towers Watson while they wait for the U.S. insurance broker to provide data required for the case, Reuters reported. The European Commission, which kicked off its probe in December because of concerns the deal to create the world’s largest insurance broker may hurt competition in major markets, said it stopped the clock on Monday.

Ukraine is hoping a post-pandemic recalibration of global supply chains will lure more investment to its battered economy, starting with European companies. Production of mattresses and furniture are already planned, Bloomberg News reported. “Asia was the world’s leading production venue,” Sergiy Tsivkach, head of the state’s UkraineInvest agency, said in an interview. “But because of the coronavirus, it became clear that long supply chains can impact contracts’ effectiveness.

Germany faces a wave of dealership bankruptcies unless car showrooms are allowed to reopen soon, the ZDK industry association said, Automotive News Europe reported. Showrooms have been shut since mid-December when the German government tightened measures to slow rising cases of the coronavirus. "The situation in automobile retail becomes more difficult with each passing week," Thomas Peckruhn, ZDK vice president, said in a statement. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will chair a meeting on Feb.

Luxembourg’s investment fund industry is a financial “black box” that helps people launder illicit money and avoid tax, according to an investigation published on Monday whose findings were rejected by the EU nation, Reuters reported. The OpenLux investigation by journalists from a group of media organisations, including Le Monde, Le Soir, the Miami Herald and Sueddeutsche Zeitung, sifted through four million documents and records on 260,000 companies linked to Luxembourg’s 4.5 trillion euro ($5.4 trillion) investment funds sector between 1955 and 2020.

Consumer spending declined last month as households cut back after Christmas and as the Covid lockdown reduced shopping opportunities, the Irish Times reported. Total spending fell 14 per cent year on year, with increased sales of digital content and spending on home-related goods failing to offset big declines in hospitality, travel and clothing. Figures compiled by fintech Revolut show spending in bars was down 94 per cent compared with January 2020, while expenditure in hotels and restaurants fell 86 per cent and 70 per cent respectively.