Philip Green is launching a restructuring of his Topshop empire, attempting to slash costs at the UK’s largest privately held fashion retailer and setting up a fierce battle with landlords, the Financial Times reported. The scandal-plagued billionaire wants to cut jobs, reduce the store portfolio and lower the rent and rates costs at his Arcadia group, whose brands include Topshop, Burton, Wallis and Miss Selfridge. Arcadia said it was “exploring several options” to cope with “an exceptionally challenging retail market and . . . continued pressures that are specific to

Nyrstar, Europe’s biggest zinc producer, has defered bond coupon payments as it tries to strike a restructuring deal with creditors and avoid bankruptcy, the Financial Times reported. The Belgian-based company had been due to pay €31.6m of interest on €850m of debt today but has deciced to exercise 30-day grace period so that it can continue talks with bondholders and Trafigura, its biggest shareholder.

Outsourcing company Mitie Group is considering acquiring the largest unit of Interserve Plc, the troubled U.K. construction company that collapsed this week and had its assets taken over by lenders, Bloomberg News reported. Mitie’s chief executive officer, Phil Bentley, is working on plans to offer Interserve’s owners, which include a consortium of banks and hedge funds, about 100 million pounds for its support services unit, Sky News reported Saturday. This unit carries out facilities management work for government and various private sector clients in the U.K.

Germany’s pace of growth will drop sharply as demand for the country’s products weakens amid a slowing global economy, according to a forecast by a leading research group, the Financial Times reported. The Munich-based Ifo Institute cut its 2019 economic growth rate estimate for the eurozone’s largest economy from 1.1 per cent to 0.6 per cent. The German economy expanded 1.5 per cent in 2018, the slowest since 2013, according to official data.

Billionaire Mike Ashley’s latest bid to control Debenhams Plc has sharpened battle lines with the troubled U.K. department-store chain’s lenders as it seeks to restructure its debt and avoid insolvency, Bloomberg News reported. Ashley, angling to add Debenhams’s roughly 240 U.K. and overseas stores to his empire that already includes Sports Direct International Plc and House of Fraser, has launched an effort he’s dubbed “Project Serpico” to expose what he says is an insider plot to steer the iconic company into the clutches of foreign hedge funds.

The German Finance Ministry urged Italian lenders to speed up a reduction of soured loans and make more progress in cutting risk, with the warning coming as the government in Berlin pushes for a merger of the country’s struggling banking titans. “The Italian banking sector has long been faced with various structural problems, including the high level of non-performing loans,” the ministry wrote in responses to lawmakers’ questions published by the Bundestag on Thursday.

A once-lucrative business within Deutsche Bank AG catering to hedge funds is on its way to becoming yet another casualty of the German lender’s chronic turmoil, Bloomberg News reported. The German firm’s revenue from prime services declined for a third straight year in 2018, while rivals Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. all saw jumps, according to people with knowledge of the business.

Industrial production in the eurozone showed signs of stabilisation in January across sectors and in most countries, despite a contraction in Germany, the bloc’s biggest economy, the Financial Times reported. Output in the region rose 1.4 per cent from the previous month, rebounding from a decline of 0.9 per cent in December, better than a forecast from analysts in a Reuters poll of 1.0 per cent expansion, Eurostat figures revealed on Wednesday.

Mozambique is seeking the cancellation of government guarantees on debts run up by state-run security firm Proindicus which helped spark a debt crisis in the country, its prime minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday. Mozambique has a case in London's High Court against investment bank Credit Suisse and a number of other parties linked with the $2 billion (£1.5 billion) worth of loans, which have sparked investigations in the United States and Mozambique, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Standard Chartered Plc may wind up losing less on its biggest bad loan in India. Lenders to bankrupt Essar Steel India Ltd. will consider increasing a payout to Standard Chartered to expedite the sale of the troubled Indian mill to ArcelorMittal, according to people with knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg News reported. That could smooth over a sticking point in months of court battles as the world’s largest steelmaker tries to open shop in the South Asian nation. Standard Chartered has been seeking repayment on about 35.6 billion rupees ($513 million) of loans to Essar Steel.