Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s holding company, LetterOne, has stepped up its criticism of a turnround plan at Spanish grocer Dia Group as it filed regulatory documents for its own bid to buy out and fix the troubled chain, the Financial Times reported. “A lot of Dia’s problems have been in the making for some time,” said Stephan DuCharme, managing partner of LetterOne division L1 Retail.

German manufacturing activity dropped to its lowest level since 2012 in February according to a closely-watched survey, but the country’s services sector remained resilient, the Financial Times reported. The purchasing managers' index for the manufacturing sector dropped to 47.6 in February, the lowest level since December 2012 and well below the expectations of analysts polled by Reuters for 49.7. A reading below 50 indicates that a sector is in contraction.

Scandinavians are taking a hard look at their institutions as allegations of systematic money laundering rock the entire region, Bloomberg News reported. With Swedbank AB becoming the latest lender to get dragged into a dirty money scandal that’s already engulfed Danske Bank A/S, those at the top of Sweden’s financial establishment are speaking out. Hans Lindblad, the director general of the Swedish National Debt Office, says the financial industry now risks losing the trust of the people. He says the consequences of that would be dire for the whole economy.

What do Germany, Malta and the Netherlands have in common? They’re the only three eurozone countries that have lower debt burdens than they did in 2008, according to a new Moody’s report, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. This might be something of a surprising result, coming a few years after a sovereign debt crisis in which it became clear that market appetite for these assets could suddenly evaporate, throwing the entire basis of the modern bond-financed-society into question.

Since taking over as the main supervisor of the euro zone’s largest lenders, the European Central Bank has waged a war against sickly lenders. The regulator has forced banks to be more open about the value of the exposures sitting on their books, and urged them to write down bad loans faster, a Bloomberg View reported. All this should not only bolster financial stability, it should also help growth: providing less forbearance to “zombie” borrowers ought to free up credit for more promising startups.

Concerns over global recession jumped to the top of the worry list for investors in corporate bonds as market stress in late 2018 and expectations for further weakness in economic data dent investor confidence, a new poll shows. Almost a third of credit investors surveyed by Bank of America Merrill Lynch see the risk of a global recession as their top worry, the highest for a single concern since mid 2017, the Financial Times reported.

Debenhams Plc’s lenders are prepared to grant the struggling department store chain more credit in an effort to ward off a potential low-ball buyout from billionaire shareholder Mike Ashley, Bloomberg News reported. After extending a 40 million-pound ($52 million) loan facility to Debenhams last week, the group of about 10 firms including hedge funds Alcentra, Angelo Gordon & Co. and Silver Point Capital is willing to lend further if necessary, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Norwegian Air’s shareholders overwhelmingly endorsed on Tuesday the lossmaking airline’s plan for a deeply discounted cash call to help bolster its finances, Chairman Bjoern Kise said. Norwegian Air said on Jan. 29 it would raise 3 billion Norwegian crowns ($348 million) in a rights issue, just days after British Airways owner IAG ruled out a bid for the budget carrier, Reuters reported.

German financial executives do not expect the slowdown in the eurozone’s biggest economy to cease any time soon, according to a closely watched survey released on Tuesday that showed a persisting decline in confidence, the Financial Times reported. The Zew Indicator of Current Conditions in Germany fell 12.6 points month-on-month to 15 in February, its lowest point since 2014 and well below expectations for 23 according to analysts polled by Reuters. That follows a steep fall, to a four-year low, in January.

Danske Bank has been forced to close all operations in the Baltics and Russia in response to the largest money-laundering scandal, which has prompted EU authorities to launch an investigation of Danish and Estonian regulators. The bank was given eight months to return customer deposits and transfer its loan contracts to another provider in Estonia, after a report released last autumn revealed the extent of the failures at the bank, the Financial Times reported.