The European Commission has been forced to grin and bear it for years as member states hurl bricks at its benighted fiscal rules. This week the commission finally has an opportunity to give its own take on the regime it oversees, the Financial Times reported. The occasion is the publication of a review of the so-called Two Pack and Six Pack reforms — legislation that was pushed through during the euro crisis notionally to make the regime more economically coherent. The review will not offer a sparkling verdict.

The French government is set to block the sale of its British Steel factory to Jingye, throwing doubts on the rescue of the failed UK manufacturer. In October, Chinese conglomerate Jingye agreed to buy British Steel in a £50m rescue deal, saving 5,000 jobs and promising £1.2bn investment, the Financial Times reported. For the takeover of all of British Steel’s assets to go ahead, Jingye needs approval from authorities in Paris as the steelmaker’s plant in Hayange, northern France, is deemed a strategic industrial asset.

French retail group Fnac Darty is being sued for £115m by the liquidator to Comet, the UK electrical chain it used to own. Fnac Darty sold Comet for £2 a year before it collapsed but received £115m as part of a controversial financing agreement with the new owners, the Financial Times reported. The failure of Comet in 2012 left UK taxpayers footing a £44m bill and more than 6,000 staff losing their jobs.

Leoni AG, a 450-year-old company that traces its roots to precious-metal threads for embroidery, is seeking salvation through an unusual modern financing tool, Bloomberg News reported. The worst performing stock among major companies in Germany in the last year, Leoni is considering an audacious refinancing package, in part by preparing to sell about 200 million euros ($220 million) worth of receivables. It’s a transaction known as factoring that would let it pay back a 170-million-euro Schuldschein, or promissory note, due in March.

Seán Dunne is seeking a US injunction against his son to prevent him from accessing €14 million the bankrupt developer believes is to be used to help settle the legal liabilities of Mr Dunne’s former wife, Gayle Killilea, The Irish Times reported. Mr Dunne’s lawyer, Luke McGrath, asked a New York court late on Thursday for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction preventing his son John Dunne from accessing funds realised from the 2013 sale of Walford, once Ireland’s most expensive home, to settle the legal case.

Irish home and commercial property prices are forecast to dip slightly over the next three years, according to figures being used by European authorities to stress test banks across the EU in 2020, The Irish Times reported. The European Bank Authority, overseeing the assessment, said on Friday that its central projections were based on data received from national central banks. However, sources said that while the Irish Central Bank provided “a possible path which is based on latest trends” to European officials, it did not issue forecasts.

Deutsche Bank reported a whopping loss for the last three months of 2019 and for the full year as it cut staff and wrote down the value of assets, affirming its status as one of Europe’s most troubled big lenders, the International New York Times reported. The bank said it lost 1.5 billion euros, or $1.6 billion, in the last three months of 2019, bringing the total loss for the year to €5.3 billion. In 2018, the bank effectively broke even for the year and in the fourth quarter.

The aluminium smelter in the Bosnian town of Mostar has fallen eerily silent since its electricity was cut in July, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The only visitors to what was once a model factory in former Yugoslavia are staff filling in redundancy papers. The closure of debt-laden Aluminij Mostar is symptomatic of the challenges facing countries across the Balkans as they try to keep loss-making state-owned businesses inherited from the communist era afloat in market economies.

The administrators to collapsed electricals retailer Comet Group have been handed a record UK insolvency fine of £1m for failures related to their independence, the Financial Times reported. Deloitte and two of its former partners, Neville Kahn and Christopher Farrington, who both left the Big Four accountancy firm during a five-year investigation, did not ensure that they were objective as administrators, according to the findings of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Thousands of people who seek debt advice are potentially ending up even worse off because of the aggressive marketing of repayment plans that they are later unable to afford, the Financial Times reported. Statistics published on Thursday by the UK’s Insolvency Service showed the number of people entering Individual Voluntary Arrangements, which allow people to pay off part of their debts on a schedule agreed with their creditors, rose to a new high of 78,000 in 2019, up almost 10 per cent from 2018.