The battle for Wm Morrison Supermarkets Plc looks set to drag on for at least a few more weeks after Clayton Dubilier & Rice LLC secured an extended deadline to bid for Britain’s fourth-largest grocer, Bloomberg News reported. Britain’s Takeover Panel confirmed a new deadline of Aug. 20 for the buyout firm to “put up or shut up” in a statement on Monday. CD&R asked to push back the date from Aug. 9 after rival Fortress Investment Group pre-emptively raised its offer for Morrison to 6.7 billion pounds ($9.3 billion) on Friday.

France took a big step on Monday into a post-pandemic future by requiring people to show a QR code proving they have a special virus pass before they can enjoy restaurants and cafes or travel by plane, train or bus across the country, the Associated Press reported. The measure is part of a government plan to encourage more people to get a COVID-19 vaccine shot and slow down a surge in infections, as the highly contagious delta variant now accounts for most cases in France. Over 36 million people in France, or more than 54% of the population, are fully vaccinated.

The State’s Covid-adjusted unemployment rate fell to a pandemic low of 13.5 per cent in July, down from 16.2 per cent the previous month, as restrictions on hospitality continue to be loosened, the Irish Times reported. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) had published figures last week, putting the jobless rate at 14.4 per cent but later pulled the release, saying the figures had been compiled incorrectly. The agency said the results for July published today replace the estimates which had been published on August 5th.

Italy's Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) has further reduced its legal claims to 4.9 billion euros ($5.8 billion), a slide on the Tuscan bank's website showed, marking another step in Rome's efforts to reprivatise the ailing lender, Reuters reported. MPS initially faced some 10 billion euros in legal risks, seen as one of the main hurdles to Italian Treasury's plans to cut its 64% stake in the bank by mid-2022, as agreed as part of a 2017 state bailout.

The European Union’s banking regulator has proposed guidance for financial-sector compliance officers, another step in the bloc’s effort to revamp its anti-money-laundering system, the Wall Street Journal reported. The proposal from the Paris-based European Banking Authority is the latest move by the EU to harmonize anti-money-laundering rules across member states and shift implementation away from national authorities.

Credit Suisse has repaid another $400 million to investors in its Greensill-linked supply chain finance funds, the Swiss bank said on Friday, Reuters reported. The collapse of the funds in March kicked off a tumultuous period for the bank, culminating with a multi-billion dollar loss related to investment fund Archegos, a raft of executive oustings and an impending strategic overhaul. The payout, originally announced with the bank's second-quarter earnings last week, is the fourth distribution so far and takes the total amount returned to the investors to roughly $5.9 billion.

British supermarket group Morrisons has agreed to an improved takeover offer worth 6.7 billion pounds ($9.3 billion) in cash from a consortium led by Fortress Investment Group, though its shares were trading above the level of the new bid, Reuters reported. That indicated investors were still hoping for a counter bid from U.S. private equity group Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R). Softbank-owned Fortress said its raised offer comprises 270 pence per Morrisons share plus a 2 pence a share special dividend and was aimed at warding off its rival suitor.

Prime minister Boris Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak have vowed to overhaul rules governing Britain's huge asset management industry to make it easier to firms to invest in the U.K., Yahoo News reported. The pair issued a rallying cry to Britain's investment industry on Wednesday night, calling for money managers to plough more cash into British businesses and assets. The prime minister and the chancellor sent an open letter to senior investment industry professionals, calling for an "investment Big Bang" to help drive the country's recovery from COVID.

After almost 18 months of relying on expensive emergency aid programs to support their economies through the pandemic, governments across Europe are scaling back some of these measures, counting on burgeoning economic growth and the power of vaccines to carry the load from here. But the insurgent spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus has thrown a new variable into that calculation, prompting concerns about whether this is the time for scheduled rollbacks in financial assistance, the New York Times reported.

Inflation in Britain will rise to an annual rate of 4 percent later this year, according to new projections by the Bank of England, a level that is double the central bank’s target and one that hasn’t been reached in a decade. But policymakers didn’t feel the need to immediately slow their efforts to stimulate the economy, the New York Times reported. They said that the increase in prices would be temporary and that inflation would return to its 2 percent target in 2023.