Suppliers to Walmart, Target, Amazon.com and other major retailers told Reuters they are placing holiday orders for Chinese-made merchandise weeks earlier this year, as a global shipping backlog threatens to leave many gift buyers empty-handed this Christmas shopping season. Reuters surveyed nearly a dozen suppliers and retailers of everything from toys to computer equipment in the United States and Europe.

Credit Suisse Group AG is considering centralising the management of its bankers to the world's wealthy, reversing a regional structure put in place six years ago, as the scandal-plagued Swiss bank looks for ways to tighten controls and improve operations, Reuters reported. The bank’s wealth management business is split, residing in three separate divisions -- the international business, Swiss business and a separate Asia-Pacific unit. Some executives felt that separation had not worked well and combining the businesses into one group would offer benefits, one of the sources said.

Budget carrier Norwegian Air showed poor judgement when it paid bonuses to top management just weeks after emerging from government-backed bankruptcy proceedings, Norway’s industry minister said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Having shed thousands of jobs during the pandemic and forced creditors to swap billions of dollars in debt for stock in the slimmed-down airline, Norwegian completed a court-ordered financial restructuring in late May.

The final easing of lockdown measures in England is still set for 19 July, the new health secretary has said, BBC.com reported. Sajid Javid told MPs that ministers "see no reason to go beyond" that "target date". He said that while cases were rising, the number of deaths "remains mercifully low". In a statement, he said no date for lifting restrictions would come with "zero risk" and that "we have to learn to live with" Covid-19. "We also know that people and businesses need certainty, so we want every step to be irreversible," he said.

The European Union notched up more than 171 billion euros ($203 billion) of orders for its second sale under its NextGenerationEU program, expanding efforts to build a curve of securities dedicated to funding its recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. The EU is selling nine billion euros of five-year debt and six billion euros of 30-year debt Tuesday, meaning that orders topped the amount offered more than tenfold, even though demand for each security fell shy of its first sale of 10-year bonds earlier this month.

A top financial regulator in Britain has ordered Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, to cease regulated activity in the country, the latest effort by a world government to limit crypto-related businesses, the Washington Post reported.

The GFG Alliance owned by commodities tycoon Sanjeev Gupta said on Monday it was progressing with a major restructuring which will allow it to pay back creditors after its main lender Greensill Capital collapsed in March, Reuters reported. “This in turn will allow GFG to refocus its business, protect jobs and develop further its remaining assets,” it said in a statement. GFG has been under pressure to find refinancing for its cash-starved web of businesses in steel, aluminium and energy after supply chain finance firm Greensill filed for insolvency.

Britain's accounting regulator said on Monday it has opened investigations into the audits of Greensill Capital and Wyelands Bank as regulatory scrutiny of the companies intensifies, Reuters reported. Wyelands Bank is owned by steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta's metals-to-finance empire GFG Alliance, which it financed. GFG Alliance was closely linked to financing company Greensill Capital which went bust earlier this year.

The European Union’s top economic policy makers are exposing a gulf in their views on how to run the economy after the pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. European Central Bank Executive Board member Fabio Panetta said on Monday that monetary officials should retain the “unconventional flexibility” they granted themselves during the crisis, keeping borrowing costs low until government spending helps push up inflation. Hours later, his policy-making colleagues Jens Weidmann and Robert Holzmann said the ECB’s emergency powers are temporary and must end once the emergency is over.

A group of creditors to Intralot SA agreed to provide almost 148 million euros ($177 million) to the beleaguered gaming company to pay off some of its bonds due September and sweeten the terms of a restructuring deal that’s been under negotiations for months, Bloomberg News reported. Under the new proposal, part of the 250 million euros of Intralot’s bonds maturing Sept. 15 would be paid out at par by a group of investors who’ve been discussing the deal with the company, according to a statement.