Blažek, famous Czech brand for menswear, has filed for insolvency, PragueMorning.cz reported. The company registers more than 150 creditors for a total debt of almost 87 million CZK. As iHNED.cz reports, the company’s founder is considering the entry of a new investor. The company became insolvent from the forced closure of stores during the first and second waves of the epidemic. Like many retailers, Blažek was already struggling with the shift to online shopping even before the pandemic struck this spring.

Italy’s main banking and industry associations have urged European Union authorities to temporarily ease EU bank rules on loan defaults and credit provisioning to help businesses cope with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. In a letter to the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen and other senior officials, the groups called for less stringent definitions to be applied to credit defaults to stop temporary liquidity problems forcing firms into bankruptcy.

A European Central Bank push to make it easier for the region’s chronically unprofitable banks to merge is facing opposition from some national regulators, with one top official warning it could backfire and damage the integration of the financial system, Bloomberg News reported. Proposals by ECB supervisory board chair Andrea Enria to give banks more freedom to source funds in one country and lend them in another could generate costs for taxpayers if lenders run into trouble after the money moves, said Tom Dechaene, a director at Belgium’s central bank.

Switzerland will return $150 million from blocked Swiss bank accounts by the end of the year to the United States to be given to victims of convicted Ponzi scheme con artist Robert Allen Stanford, the Federal Ministry of Justice said on Monday, Reuters reported. Stanford, a former Texas financier known primarily by his middle name, was convicted of fraud by a Houston jury in 2012 in what prosecutors called a $7.2 billion fraud that lasted two decades and which was eclipsed in size only by the Ponzi scheme run by Bernie Madoff.

The U.K. and the European Union tomorrow will sign the treaty formalizing the post-Brexit trade agreement the two sides reached on Christmas Eve, Bloomberg News reported. After European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel sign the document, it will be flown by Royal Air Force jet to London where Prime Minister Boris Johnson will do the same. British lawmakers will get only a day to debate the agreement, because it needs to be implemented by the time the Brexit transition period ends at 11 p.m. on Dec. 31.

Ireland has added some fresh heat into the question of whether countries should raise minimum wages to put their economies on a more stable footing in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, with Prime Minister Micheál Martin saying his government would look at increasing the level by a fifth, the Wall Street Journal reported. Martin said such a move would be aimed at addressing income equality exposed by the pandemic, with many lower-income workers across the world bearing the brunt of lockdowns while better-paid people work from home.

The Moscow Commercial Court has again extended the procedure of sale of assets of Vneshprombank former co-owner Georgy Bedzhamov, charged with large-scale embezzlement for 6 months, according to court records, RASPSINews.com reported. Previously, the bankruptcy proceedings were extended in July. Bedzhamov was declared bankrupt in July 2018. In 2016, Bedzhamov was put on the international wanted list on embezzlement charges.

The European Union and the United Kingdom made public Saturday the vast agreement that is likely to govern future trade and cooperation between them from Jan. 1, setting the 27-nation bloc’s relations with its former member country and neighbor on a new but far more distant footing, the Associated Press reported. EU ambassadors and lawmakers on both sides of the English Channel will now pore over the “EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement,” which contains over 1,240 pages of text. EU envoys are expected to meet on Monday to discuss the document, drawn up over nine intense months of talks.

Britain yesterday urged businesses to prepare for Brexit, just days before a transition period designed to smooth the UK’s departure from the European Union comes to an end, Reuters reported.Britain and the EU clinched a trade deal on Thursday - one which preserves zero-tariff and zero-quota access to the bloc’s single market but which will still cause disruption. The transition period, under which Britain stayed aligned to the EU’s trading and regulatory rules, ends at 2300 GMT on Dec. 31.