Portugal is confident the European Commission will approve its plan to rescue ailing flag carrier TAP, Finance Minister Joao Leao said in an interview, adding that he expected that green light by the end of March, Reuters reported. The government unveiled its overhaul plan last month, proposing 2,000 job cuts by 2022 and pay cuts of up to 25%, while saying the airline would need around 2 billion euros ($2.46 billion) in extra funds with state guarantees to cover financing needs until 2024.

Germany wants to extend beyond January a freeze on insolvency rules put in place to avoid a wave of corporate bankruptcies due to the coronavirus pandemic, Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht told the Handelsblatt newspaper, Reuters reported. Last March, the government offered respite to companies that find themselves in financial trouble due to the pandemic by allowing them to delay filing for bankruptcy until the end of September.

Rising corporate debt and the prospect of further Covid-19 lockdowns pose a systemic risk to France’s financial system that may rise in the coming months, according to the country’s central bank, Bloomberg News reported. Debts of non-financial companies are now the greatest vulnerability in the system, the Bank of France said in its semi-annual review of financial risks. While the second lockdown starting in November didn’t hit some companies as severely as the first, a slow economic recovery will make it tough for some to pay off debts built up since the start of the crisis.

Ryanair slashed its annual traffic forecast by around 5 million passengers on Thursday, saying fresh lockdowns in Britain and Ireland targeting a highly contagious new variant of COVID-19 would leave the countries with “few, if any” flights, Reuters reported. The Irish low-cost carrier, Europe’s largest, also harshly criticised public health measures, saying Ireland’s travel curbs were “inexplicable and ineffective” and called on the country and Britain to accelerate the pace of vaccine rollouts.

AMC Entertainment Inc. is in talks with Apollo Global Management Inc. and other top creditors over a potential financing deal backed by the cinema chain’s European assets, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. AMC, the world’s largest movie theater company, is negotiating with lenders including Apollo, Davidson Kempner Capital Management LP, and Ares Management Corp. to expand the line of credit available to the company’s U.K.-based Odeon Cinemas Group subsidiary.

The British Property Federation (BPF) has written to the government urging it to overhaul UK insolvency rules, FashionUnited.uk reported. In a letter to corporate responsibility minister Lord Callanan, the group warned that the flexibility of the U.K.’s insolvency framework had led to an “abuse” of CVA processes which disproportionately impacted commercial landlords. A long list of fashion retailers launched CVAs last year, including LK Bennett, Ann Summers, Moss Bros, Clarks, New Look, AllSaints, Bair Group and Monsoon Accessorize.

Danish prosecutors said on Thursday that they had dropped charges against six former Danske Bank employees as part of an investigation into the bank’s involvement in one of the world’s biggest money laundering scandals, Reuters reported. Danske Bank is under investigation in several countries, including the United States, over some 200 billion euros ($246 billion) of suspicious transactions that passed through the bank’s Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015.

The European Union can no longer legally recognise Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country's legitimate head of state after he lost his position as head of parliament, the bloc's 27 governments said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Guaido is still seen by the United States and Britain as Venezuela's rightful leader following the disputed 2018 re-election of President Nicolas Maduro, and two EU diplomats stressed the EU still did not recognise Maduro as president.

Digital services taxes adopted by India, Italy and Turkey discriminate against U.S. companies and are inconsistent with international tax principles, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said on Wednesday, paving the way for potential retaliatory tariffs, Reuters reported.