Hungary held interest rates at the first policy meeting under Governor Mihaly Varga, with attention now shifting to the central bank’s monetary-policy guidance, Bloomberg News reported. The National Bank of Hungary kept the benchmark rate unchanged at 6.5% on Tuesday, tied with Romania for the highest key interest rate in the European Union. Annual price growth reached a 15-month high of 5.6% in February, bolstering bets that little to no room remained for monetary easing this year.

The UK’s top financial watchdog has promised a “less intensive approach” to firms whose intentions are pure, signaling a more pragmatic stance in a new five-year strategy that leans heavily into the government’s growth agenda, Bloomberg News reported. The Financial Conduct Authority, responsible for supervising some 42,000 firms, is trying to cut back on excessive form-filling and other hurdles that the industry says makes the UK a less attractive market.

More than 8,300 bounce back loans issued to the construction sector during the pandemic are suspected to have been fraudulent, according to a Construction News report. The loans, issued from May 2020 as emergency relief of up to £50,000 for small companies, were backed by 100 per cent government guarantees. Data obtained by Construction News under the Freedom of Information Act from the British Business Bank, which facilitated the scheme, showed that 8,356 bounce back loans to the industry were flagged as suspected frauds by lenders at the end of January.

Liberty Galati, the sole integrated steel producer in the region, hopes to resume full operations at a capacity of 2 million tonnes per year, about two-thirds of its nameplate capacity according to the pre-insolvency request approved by the court this month – and the revised European Union’s strategies in the sectors of defense and energy may help it survive, Romania-Insider.com reported. Liberty Galati has two months to come up with a recovery plan, which must necessarily envisage an output of over 172,000 tonnes per month, according to the pre-insolvency request consulted by Profit.ro.

The European Union is delaying the retaliatory tariffs it announced after the United States imposed a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports earlier this month, CNN.com reported. The countermeasures, which include higher tariffs on American whiskey, were set to take effect starting April 1 and follow a phased approach. Instead, they will take effect all at once in mid-April, pending negotiations, the Commission announced on Thursday. In addition to whiskey, the first phase called for 50% tariffs on motorboats and motorcycles from the US.

The Bank of England has left itself the option to “skip” an interest rate cut later this year, economists have said, after policymakers voted to leave borrowing costs unchanged at 4.5 percent, The Telegraph reported. Andrew Bailey, the Governor, was among the eight members of the nine-strong Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to vote to keep rates on hold, with only one member - Swati Dhingra - voting to cut to 4.25pc.

A senior Dundee University figure has told MSPs that insolvency is a "real possibility" as the institution attempts to tackle a £35m funding black hole, BBC.com reported. Acting chair of court Tricia Bey said without forthcoming financial support from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) the university will run out of money by the end of June. Interim principal Prof Shane O'Neill told the Scottish Parliament's education committee he was given the "false assumption" last year that the university was close to breaking even despite having a £12.3m operating deficit at the time.

Romania's largest publishing house, Litera, founded in 1989 in Chisinau by Moldovan entrepreneur Anatol Vidrascu, announced it is taking over the online marketplace Elefant.ro from the insolvent online retailer Elefant Online, planning to turn it into a modern online platform for selling books, toys, stationery, and school supplies, Romania-Insider.com reported. Before its insolvency was announced in 2024, Elefant was the second-largest marketplace in Romania. Litera publishing house's activity peaked in 2021 when its turnover reached RON 92 million with a RON 10 million net profit.

A rise in U.S. tariffs on imports from the European Union that was met with retaliation would weaken economic growth in the eurozone and push inflation higher, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported. Speaking to European lawmakers, Lagarde said an increase in U.S. tariffs of 25 percentage points would lower the eurozone’s economic growth rate by 0.3 of a percentage point in the first year.