Italy on Sunday ended talks with UniCredit over the sale of Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) in a major setback to years-long efforts by the Rome government to return the ailing Tuscan bank to private hands, Reuters reported. Failure to bridge a multi-billion euro valuation gap between the parties leaves Italy unable to complete the restructuring of its banking system which it started six years ago. Rome will now seek an extension of deadlines agreed with European Union authorities to re-privatise MPS and a Treasury official said it did not expect discussions to be difficult.

Barclays Plc is leading a round of talks with investors to raise the equivalent of 500 million pounds ($691 million) of debt for U.K. supermarket chain Asda after a deal to purchase its forecourt gas pumps business fell through, Bloomberg News reported. The bank is seeking to raise senior secured debt for Asda which could be a mix of bonds and loans. The proceeds, along with 262 million pounds on Asda’s balance sheet, will go to repay a 750 million-pound bridge loan.

France’s 2022 budget deficit will be wider than forecast only a month ago after President Emmanuel Macron’s government announced plans to contain energy prices, hand out checks to more than half the population, and make high-risk investments in future industrial sectors, Bloomberg News reported. With just six months to go until elections, Prime Minister Jean Castex said Thursday that around 38 million people earning less than 2,000 euros ($2,330) a month will receive 100 euros in “inflation compensation” to shield them against a surging fuel costs.

Italy has urged the European Union to start work immediately on a plan to create a joint storage system for strategic gas reserves, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Friday, Reuters reported. Speaking to reporters after an EU summit, Draghi said Brussels needed to draw up an inventory of gas reserves that are available today across the bloc. "On energy, Italy underlined the need to intervene immediately at a European level," Draghi said. European gas prices have soared in recent weeks amid tight supply and surging CO2 prices as economies gradually emerge from the health pandemic.

German power retailer Ziegler Strom-Vertrieb said on Thursday it would stop delivering to customers in Kappelrodeck in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg at the end of 2021 due to spiralling wholesale prices, Reuters reported. It is the second small power supplier in Germany this week to announce it will stop operating due to the surge in gas prices. “With our procurement conditions, we can no longer offer customers market-compatible prices,” Ziegler said in a notice on its website.

Recent debt restructurings of distressed Italian corporates, including ferry operator Moby, construction group Astaldi and building product company Officine Maccaferri, highlight bondholders’ exposure to greater complexities and uncertainties in Italian corporate restructuring processes compared to more creditor-friendly European jurisdictions, Fitch Ratings said in a report released today.

The Irish government has moved in Finance Bill 2021 to close off a potential loophole in laws introduced during the summer to impose a 10 per cent stamp duty on bulk buyers of 10 or more houses within a one-year period, the Irish Times reported. The Bill, published on Thursday, seeks to insert a clarification into law that the stamp duty also applies to the “indirect” acquisition of a house by way of, for example, the purchase of shares in a company that owns a property.

European Union leaders pressured a defiant Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki Thursday to fall back into line on recognizing that EU law trumps national decision-making, hoping that dialogue will stave off a fundamental crisis in the bloc, the Associated Press reported. Morawiecki instead painted a picture of an overbearing union treating its 27 member nations as mere provinces, usurping ever more powers and feeling free to impose its values at will against the wishes of sovereign peoples.

The global upswing in trade is leaving the U.K. behind, an early sign of the challenge Brexit is presenting its economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K. formally began its new relationship with the European Union Jan. 1. Before then, and before the Covid-19 pandemic upended world trade, Jason Wouhra’s food wholesale business in England’s West Midlands, Lioncroft Wholesale Ltd., generated up to a quarter of its annual revenue from customers in Spain, Portugal and other markets in the EU. Lioncroft has now stopped exporting to the EU altogether.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak plans to extend a program of state-backed loans for U.K. businesses, one of the measures to aid the economy’s recovery from the worst recession in a century, Bloomberg News reported. The Recovery Loan Scheme was due to end Dec. 31 but will now be extended for a further six months, according to a person familiar with the Treasury’s plans who asked not to be named because discussions are still underway. Sunak is set to announce the decision in his budget on Oct. 27, the person said.