The number of U.K. businesses in significant financial distress jumped the most in at least seven years last quarter, with firms across all sectors seeing their situation deteriorate, Bloomberg News reported. There are 723,000 companies facing serious problems, according to research by intelligence provider Begbies Traynor published Thursday. That’s a 15% increase from the end of last year, and the biggest quarterly increase since it began publishing the data in 2014. From a year ago, the number has climbed 42%.

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The Irish High Court has approved a survival plan for the troubled airline Norwegian Air and related companies, the Irish Times reported. In a written decision Mr. Justice Michael Quinn said he was satisfied to approve the scheme put together by the airline’s examiner Kieran Wallace of KPMG. The airline’s Oslo-based parent company and several of its Irish-registered subsidiaries had sought the protection of the Irish courts due to factors including the devastating impact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the airline industry and international travel.

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The European Union needs to study the rise of special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) but it is too early to say if they are a “bubble”, the executive director designate for EU securities watchdog ESMA said on Thursday. SPACs have begun attracting big names in European finance, with former UniCredit boss Jean-Pierre Mustier teaming up with France’s richest man Bernard Arnault to launch a SPAC that will be listed in Amsterdam and aimed at European financial deals.
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Germany’s finance minister denied any blame for the multi-billion-euro Wirecard fraud on Thursday, pointing the finger at the company and its auditors, EY, for waving the firm’s accounts through for a decade, Reuters reported. Olaf Scholz joins a long list of politicians and officials who have denied responsibility for slipshod oversight and what critical lawmakers see as a pro-Wirecard bias that failed to avert Germany’s biggest post-war fraud.
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Four years ago, Andrea Agnelli stood in the 74,000-seat soccer arena in Cardiff and witnessed his team, Juventus Football Club SpA, get smashed by Real Madrid in the Champions League final. As painful as that 4-1 defeat might have been for Agnelli, the offspring of Italy’s preeminent industrial dynasty walked away with a useful lesson: to win, surround yourself with the best players and teams. The next year, Agnelli, 45, followed through with a bold 100 million-euro ($120 million) bet, buying Portuguese superstar Ronaldo from Real Madrid.
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Households in Britain, especially poorer ones, are far more likely to have suffered a severe income shock during the coronavirus pandemic over the past year than their counterparts in France and Germany, a well-respected British-based think tank said Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. The Resolution Foundation also said that households in the U.K. are also more likely to have run up more debt in response to the financial shockwaves emanating from the pandemic. In a report, which was entitled “After Shocks” and was supported by U.S.
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European officials want to limit police use of facial recognition and ban the use of certain kinds of AI systems, in one of the broadest efforts yet to regulate high-stakes applications of artificial intelligence, the Wall Street Journal reported. The European Union’s executive arm proposed a bill Wednesday that would also create a list of so-called high-risk uses of AI that would be subject to new supervision and standards for their development and use, such as critical infrastructure, college admissions and loan applications.
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