Ireland will join an international tax agreement that provides for a global minimum effective tax rate of 15 percent for large multinational corporations, the country's finance department announced Thursday, The Hill reported. The development comes as countries participating in negotiations at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are meeting Friday to reach an agreement. Ireland had previously been a key holdout to a deal.

British consumer morale has fallen to its lowest since February, when the country was under heavy COVID-19 restrictions, due to worries about the economic outlook and about rising prices, a Bank of America report showed on Friday, Reuters reported. The survey chimed with other gauges of consumer confidence in Britain that have suggested a growing cost-of-living squeeze has started to drag on the economy's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Surveying the rows of purple cabbage that stretch across one of her fields, Katharine Nundy says the outlook for her farm is gloomy. Like other farmers across the U.K., she used to rely on an influx of seasonal workers from the European Union to bring in the harvest, and is struggling without it this year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K. left the 27-member bloc last year and brought an end this year to the free movement of EU citizens into the country in the midst of a pandemic that has created labor shortages in many major economies.

Credit Suisse Group AG said that it will front “as much as possible” of the legal and advisory costs to recover cash for investors in supply-chain finance funds it ran with the now-defunct Greensill Capital, Bloomberg News reported. The majority of expenses incurred in recovering the money has not been passed onto investors, Credit Suisse said in a statement published on Wednesday. It estimates it will spend around $145 million for the process in 2021.

The European Union on Wednesday urged member countries to provide relief funds to consumers and small businesses hit hardest by rising gas and electricity prices, as criticism mounts that the bloc’s climate change fighting policies are fueling the problem, the Associated Press reported. In recent days, France and Spain have led the charge for change to the rules governing EU energy markets as the price surge ramps up already-high utility bills and increases pressure on many people already hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

Britain's government bond market is showing signs of strain from the country's energy crisis, with headlines about gas prices sparking heavy selling this week - a new development that points to growing unease over inflation expectations, Reuters reported. There was disarray in Britain in recent days as a deficit of truckers left fuel pumps dry across the land and a spike in European wholesale natural gas prices tipped energy companies into bankruptcy.

Britain's competition regulator has scrapped its action against Ryanair and British Airways over their failure to offer refunds to passengers prevented from flying by COVID-19 restrictions, saying the legal position was unclear, Reuters reported. During pandemic lockdowns, instead of offering refunds to those legally unable to fly, IAG-owned British Airways offered vouchers or rebooking and Ryanair providing the option to rebook.

Barcelona was technically bankrupt when president Joan Laporta took over earlier this year, the club said Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. Barcelona CEO Ferrán Reverter presented a grim picture of the club’s financial situation while releasing the results from a Deloitte audit that started after Laporta arrived in March following the resignation of former president Josep Bartomeu and his board of directors last year.

TUI AG will raise 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) by selling new stock, making it the latest travel company to tap investors for cash to reduce a giant pandemic debt pile, Bloomberg News reported. The share sale, at a discount price of 2.15 euros each in a rights offering, will allow the world’s biggest tour operator to reduce its draw on a state-backed rescue loan to zero, TUI said Wednesday in a statement. Airlines have been selling stock to firm up balance sheets as easing border restrictions begin to revive bookings.

A post-Covid growth surge in the Irish economy is expected to generate 160,000 additional jobs over the next two years, reducing the unemployment rate to below 6 per cent, the Central Bank has said, the Irish Times reported. In its latest quarterly bulletin the regulator predicted turbo-charged growth of 15.3 per cent this year, nearly double its previous forecast in July, and 7.2 per cent next year on the back of a rapid resurgence in consumer spending linked to the unwinding of €16 billion in excess savings built up during the pandemic.