The High Court has confirmed the appointment of an examiner to water firm Celtic Pure, which was at the centre of recent product recalls, The Irish Times reported. Mr Justice Michael Quinn also heard that there have been 20 expressions of interest from potential investors in the firm. Last month, the Co Monaghan-based provider of bottled drinking water sought the protection of the court from its creditors due to the fall out from two investigations launched after naturally occurring arsenic in some of the firm’s batches exceeded regulatory limits.

Mario Draghi said the eurozone economy faced a much more “prolonged sag” than was expected even a few months ago, as the European Central Bank president justified the monetary stimulus he announced this month, the Financial Times reported. Mr Draghi’s comments came after a key survey of business executives showed that the eurozone’s economy was close to stalling, dragged down by a steep drop in German manufacturing activity. The new data hit markets and prompted predictions of imminent recession on Monday.

Britain’s Pension Protection Fund (PPF) said on Monday it would assess the funding levels of Thomas Cook’s retirement schemes, following the collapse of the world’s oldest travel firm, Reuters reported. PPF is an industry-funded scheme set up to protect the pensions of employees in failing companies. “We await notification that the associated schemes have entered PPF assessment,” a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement, adding PPF would protect the pensions of people on Thomas Cook’s defined benefit, or final salary, schemes.

Commerzbank said on Friday it wanted to shed thousands of staff and close a fifth of its branches in a strategy overhaul, after the German lender’s attempt to merge with Deutsche Bank failed, Reuters reported. The bank, partly owned by the German government after a bailout and struggling to generate profits, also aims to sell a stake in its Polish subsidiary mBank and absorb its Comdirect online brokerage unit.

RTÉ has appointed the corporate finance arm of KPMG to review its strategic options for 2RN, its transmission network business, the Sunday Times reports. An outright sale of the business could raise up to €200 million for the cash-strapped national broadcaster, The Irish Times reported. The Central Bank of Ireland is at an advanced stage of an investigation into mortgage lenders who add legal fees to the bills of customers in arrears, driving them deeper into debt. Some banks stopped the practice after the regulator intervened.

Companies in Europe are about to take a leaf out of the U.S. playbook on credit default swaps by making it harder for hedge funds to profit from a company’s collapse, Bloomberg News reported. Junk bonds financing the buyout of Merlin Entertainments Plc include terms in their documentation that prevent investors holding ‘net short positions’ with CDS contracts from voting on amendments, waivers or default notices. The provision follows similar efforts by high-yield borrowers in the U.S. sidelining speculators with an interest in seeing a company going bust.

Thomas Cook has gone into administration after knife-edge talks over the weekend with lenders, shareholders and the UK government failed to piece together a rescue package for the 178-year-old travel company, the Financial Times reported. Following a drawn-out day of negotiations at Latham & Watkins, the law firm, on Sunday, Thomas Cook’s board said early on Monday morning that despite “considerable efforts” the failure of the talks meant “it had no choice but to take steps to enter into compulsory liquidation with immediate effect”.

French airline XL Airways has called on Air France to discuss a rescue deal to avert the collapse of the budget carrier that halted ticket sales and payments last week, Reuters reported. XL Airways, which has said it needs 35 million euros ($38.6 million) in fresh financing, requested in a statement on Sunday a meeting with Air France and the French authorities in the coming hours before a court is expected to put it into receivership on Monday.

The world’s leading economies need to ease trade tensions and act decisively to prevent a descent into a low-growth trap from which it would be difficult to escape, the OECD warned on Thursday, the Financial Times reported. Labelling the economic outlook as “increasingly fragile and uncertain”, the Paris-based international organisation forecast that Britain would fall into recession if it left the EU without a deal and eurozone growth would slow to close to zero.

For the umpteenth time, Deutsche Bank AG is ensnared in an alleged regulatory blunder. Except this time, the stakes are greater than its own integrity: Confidence in its regulator, the European Central Bank, is on the line too, a Bloomberg View reported. The ECB is considering whether to probe Germany’s biggest bank for trading in its riskiest debt without the regulator’s approval, according to the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. In an effort to maintain liquidity in the bonds, the firm’s securities unit continued to make a market in the notes well after they were sold to investors.