Whether Brexit purists or radical socialists win Britain’s election next month, a deluge of fresh debt is set to bloat the country’s 1.6 trillion pound ($2.1 trillion) government bond pile, Reuters reported. But the permutations around the Dec. 12 election - and the implications for Brexit - make it tough for holders of British government debt to predict just what the borrowing bonanza will mean for them. In 2010, Bill Gross - then cast as “king of the bond market” - warned that British government bonds were “resting on a bed of nitroglycerine” because of Britain’s large budget deficit.

Proposals to reform the euro zone’s bailout fund are creating a political storm in Italy, where parties and institutions are battling over whether Rome should try to block the reform at the EU level, Reuters reported. A draft of the reform was agreed by euro zone finance ministers in June and is due to be finalised by leaders next month, but senior Italian officials, including its central bank chief, have warned some measures are financially dangerous.

Alpha Bank on Tuesday reported lower third-quarter profits after higher bad debt provisions and said it would launch a big securitisation of soured loans to clean up its balance sheet, Reuters reported. Alpha, 11% owned by the country’s bank rescue fund HFSF, reported net profit from continuing operations of 4.8 million euros after net earnings of 59.4 million euros in the second quarter. Provisions for bad debt rose 6.3% quarter-on-quarter to 261.5 million euros.

A co-operative bank has become the first German lender to pass on the cost of negative interest rates to new retail customers with small deposits, in the latest sign of how the European Central Bank’s policy is upending the country’s banking sector, the Financial Times reported. Volksbank Fürstenfeldbruck, which is located 30km west of Munich and has just €1.8bn in assets, said that it will collect a “depositary charge” of -0.5 per cent on instant access savings accounts with deposits of €1 and above.

Italy’s Central Bank’s governor, Ignazio Visco, said on Friday that he favours reforming the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) but without triggering market panic, New Europe reported. The euro zone’s bailout fund has been designed as a lender of last resort for the 19-member Eurozone. However, the Italian government fears that widening the scope of the ESM’s mandate to include debt restructuring could trigger a sudden rise of sovereign rates rise for the southern periphery.

Chilango’s auditor has declined to sign off its accounts six months after the fast-food chain raised £3.7m by selling controversial “burrito bonds” to hundreds of small investors, the Financial Times reported. Chilango has hired restructuring advisers RSM to conduct a full review of its options. It is considering a range of options including raising new capital or a sale as part of a pre-pack administration, according to one person with knowledge of the situation. RSM said it had been engaged to “assist on long-term planning, options and strategy”.

Steinhoff International has sold its UK furniture retailing business to Alteri Investors’ new retail fund as it strives to cut debt, the Financial Times reported. The stores Bensons for Beds, Harveys Furniture and upholstery and bedding manufacturers Relyon have been owned by the troubled South African conglomerate since 2005 but have struggled recently as UK consumers turn more cautious about big-ticket items. In the year to September 2017, the last period for which accounts are available, Bensons and Harveys made a combined operating loss of £28m on sales of £566m.

An attempt by lenders to get PizzaExpress Ltd. to open talks on ways to prop up the troubled restaurant chain has failed to bring its Chinese owner to the negotiating table, Bloomberg News reported. The investors, holding 70% of PizzaExpress’s most senior bonds, sent a letter to the company a week ago pledging to provide new funds, according to people familiar with the matter.

Greece’s Eurobank said on Thursday it was selling two real estate portfolios worth a combined 84 million euros (£72 million) to Brook Lane Capital and plans to put a third portfolio up for sale, Reuters reported. Eurobank, which is 2.4% owned by Greece’s HFSF bank rescue fund after being bailed out during the country’s debt crisis, repossessed most of the properties, residential and commercial, after loan defaults. The bank, Greece’s third largest lender by assets, said it wanted to focus on other property assets on its books.

The German economy has defied expectations of a recession by growing 0.1 per cent in the third quarter as higher spending by households and the government offset a downturn in its export-focused manufacturing sector, the Financial Times reported. The mildly positive growth in the third quarter means the German economy has avoided a technical recession.