Britain opened its borders to fully vaccinated travelers from the U.S. and the European Union on Monday as travel industry leaders urged the government to further ease restrictions and allow people to enjoy the benefits of a successful COVID-19 inoculation program, the Associated Press reported. The new rules came into effect amid reports that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government may add a new category to Britain’s traffic light system of travel restrictions, a move industry officials say would make many people decide to stay home.
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The euro zone economy grew faster than expected in the second quarter, pulling out of a pandemic-induced recession, while the easing of coronavirus curbs also helped inflation shoot past the European Central Bank's 2% target in July, Reuters reported. The European Union's statistics office Eurostat said on Friday that its initial estimate showed gross domestic product (GDP) in the 19 countries that use the euro had expanded 2.0% in April-June from the previous quarter.
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The German economy returned to growth in the second quarter but bounced back less strongly than expected amid supply chain bottlenecks thatare hitting industry, data showed on Friday, Reuters reported. Europe's largest economy grew by 1.5% quarter on quarter, compared with a revised contraction of 2.1% in the first quarter, and by 9.2% on the year, the Federal Statistics Office said. A Reuters poll had forecast increases of 2.0% and 9.6% respectively.
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The liquidator of a Kildare company linked to a Germany property group that collapsed last year, resulting in losses of up to €107 million for Irish investors, has queried the “significant” level of salaries, fees and expenses paid out by the Irish firm before it became insolvent, the Irish Times reported. Hanover-based German Property Group (GPG), formerly known as Dolphin Trust, collapsed last year after taking €1.5 billion from investors in the Republic, the UK, Asia and elsewhere since it was set up by businessman Charles Smethurst in 2008.
The row over insurers’ failure to pay out on business interruption cover dominates the latest set of rulings announced by the Financial Services Ombudsman, the Irish Times reported. The digest of decisions – the sixth published by the ombudsman’s office – gives summaries of 21 decisions issued during 2020 and 2021, of which 12 relate to the investigation of complaints relating to business interruption insurance. “To date, we have received 1,051 complaints arising from the circumstances surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic,” the ombudsman, Ger Deering, said.
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Credit Suisse Group AG knew Archegos Capital Management was a massive risk and didn’t take actions to fix it, according to an investigation the bank commissioned into the collapse of the family investment firm, the Wall Street Journal reported. The report released Thursday, prepared by a law firm for Credit Suisse, detailed how the bank for years granted Archegos special dispensation to avoid rules meant to protect the bank. It also ignored staff warnings before the family investment firm’s collapse.
The French government accused Britain on Thursday of enforcing discriminatory new rules that will lift quarantine requirements for most vaccinated travelers — but not for those arriving from France, the New York Times reported. The British authorities announced on Wednesday that, starting in August, a quarantine would no longer be required for travelers from the United States or from most of the European Union who had been vaccinated with shots authorized by either American or European drug regulators.
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Private equity group American Industrial Partners has moved to take control of one of Sanjeev Gupta’s key assets, the Dunkirk aluminum smelter, in an escalation of an acrimonious battle between the businessman and the suitor he spurned, Bloomberg News reported. A U.K. holding company for the smelter has been placed into administration, according to a filing last week. The legal action was initiated by AIP, according to a person familiar with the matter, who declined to be named as the matter isn’t public. AIP owns most of the senior debt on the Dunkirk plant.
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Permanent or long-term debt relief arrangements on mortgages “have substantially higher success rates” than temporary arrangements and are in the best interest of both borrowers and lenders, a new research paper published by the Central Bank has concluded, the Irish Times reported. “This is particularly true during a crisis such as that in Ireland after the 2008 crash, where borrower income shocks were deep and long-lasting, and negative equity was widespread,” the paper’s authors Claire Labonne, Fergal McCann and Terry O’Malley have written.
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Germany’s top court on Wednesday dismissed an appeal by two British bankers over their conviction in a massive tax evasion case, confirming that the so-called cum-ex transactions they used were illegal, the Associated Press reported. The Federal Court of Justice also confirmed that the seizure of 14 million euros ($16.5 million) from one of the defendants and about 176 million euros ($207 million) from Hamburg-based private bank M.M. Warburg was justified. The ruling sets a key precedent for future trials in the “cum-ex” scandal involving hundreds of suspects.
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