Collapsed UK cafe operator Patisserie Holdings sold its two main businesses for 13 million pounds ($16.7 million) on Thursday, administrators said, in a deal that rescues dozens of cafes and some 2,000 jobs, Reuters reported. Patisserie said in a statement it had sold bakery chain Patisserie Valerie to Irish private equity fund Causeway Capital and its Philpotts brand to food retailer A.F. Blakemore for 10 million pounds cash and a further 3 million in future payments. KPMG said 21 Philpotts stores had been sold.

Puma Energy, the retail and storage arm of commodities trader Trafigura, plans to restructure and sell assets to cut its debt and improve profits, a source familiar with the matter said, Reuters reported. Puma has hired consulting firm McKinsey under new chief executive Emma Fitzgerald who took over last month from Pierre Eladari, who had overseen rapid expansion, the source said. Although its full-year 2018 results have not been finalised, Puma expects a small net loss or profit, the source added.

It was supposed to be the year when it all came together for Ireland’s banks, with the wind in their sales from a booming economy, newly privatised Allied Irish Banks at full throttle and dividends finding their way into the hands of patient shareholders. Instead, 2018 saw 30 per cent wiped off the market value of Ireland’s two big banks — AIB and Bank of Ireland — as both partially state-owned lenders were hit by Brexit uncertainty and fears over core profitability, the Financial Times reported.

Global banks moving operations from the U.K. to the European Union because of Brexit are poised to face fresh regulatory scrutiny on the value of their assets and capital as the bloc’s top watchdog seeks to curtail risks, Bloomberg News reported. The European Central Bank and national authorities will conduct an in-depth review of the largest firms’ balance sheets, including their most illiquid assets, Ed Sibley, a member of the ECB supervisory board, said in an interview.

Prathap C. Reddy and his family, founders of India’s Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd., plan to sell their holdings in an insurance venture with Munich Re AG to repay debt, people with knowledge of the matter said. The family is seeking to sell its entire holding of 41 percent in Apollo Munich Health Insurance Co., for about 12 billion rupees ($170 million) in six months, the people said asking not to be identified as the discussions are private, Bloomberg News reported.

The French government is considering buying out minority shareholders of Electricite de France SA, the first step in a corporate restructuring to address the challenge of replacing the country’s nuclear-power backbone, people familiar with the matter said, Bloomberg News reported. The government has asked EDF, of which it owns 84 percent, to propose changes in its structure. The utility’s cash flows are vulnerable to volatile power prices and intensifying competition, and it’s already struggling to fund billions of euros of investments to maintain or replace its aging reactors.

Italy is willing to support the creation of a “New Alitalia” in the latest attempt to help revive the struggling carrier, the prime minister’s office said in a statement on Wednesday. Alitalia was put under special administration in 2017 after workers rejected its latest rescue plan, leaving the government once again seeking a buyer to save the carrier, Reuters reported. It will be the airline’s third rescue in a decade.

UK shares lagged their euro-zone peers on Tuesday as growing risks of a disorderly Brexit rattled investors, while poor results from tour operator TUI and a profit warning from online trading platform Plus500 sapped appetite for stocks. The mood soured on the main indices in choppy afternoon trade as Prime Minister Theresa May urged lawmakers to back her Brexit deal and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney warned again of the economic damage if Britain leaves the EU without a deal, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

The European Central Bank should pause plans to ditch its crisis-era stimulus, the governor of the Dutch central bank has said, in a sign that concerns over disappointing economic growth have spread to the eurozone’s most hawkish circles, the Financial Times reported. Klaas Knot, a contender to replace Mario Draghi as ECB president, told the Financial Times that the central bank needed to gauge how badly the economy was faring before pressing ahead with plans to normalise monetary policy.

Thyssenkrupp shares fell to a three-year low on Tuesday after the company warned that economic and political uncertainties were growing as it unveiled disappointing results, the Financial Times reported. The German industrial group, which produces a range of products from steel to elevators, reported a sharp 37 per cent drop in operating earnings in the last three months of 2018 — the first quarter of the company’s financial year.