Earlier this week BlackRock executive Rick Rieder urged the European Central Bank to stimulate the eurozone economy by printing money and using it to buy equities, the Financial Times reported. This idea has attracted rather less comment than it should have, even though it’s not a new idea. The Bank of Japan has been buying domestic equities for years: it owns about 75 per cent of the country’s exchange traded fund market and is a top 10 shareholder in 40 per cent of Japan’s listed companies.

Primark is asking landlords to cut its rents in an attempt to compete with rivals that used insolvency proceedings to reduce costs and remain open, the Sunday Times reported, without saying where it got the information, Bloomberg News reported. The fast-fashion retailer is asking for cuts of as much as 30% on contracts with several years left in exchange for lease extensions or refurbishments, according to the newspaper. Primark has 189 stores, most of which are leased, it said.

Croatian food company Fortenova Grupa, the Balkan region’s biggest firm by sales, said on Friday that more than 80% of its shareholders had supported the issuance of a four-year bond worth up to 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion), Reuters reported. The bond is aimed at financing a 1.1 billion euro liquidity loan the firm, formerly known as Agrokor, took two years ago to avoid bankruptcy, the company said in a statement. That followed an expansion drive based on high and expensive debt.

Bankrupt German wind turbine manufacturer Senvion is in talks to buy time to strike a rescue deal as negotiations with potential buyers of the company continue, people close to the matter said, Reuters reported. The company is in discussions with creditors to extend a 100 million euro ($111 million) insolvency loan so it can avoid having to agree to sell at any price, they added. An original end-June deadline for final bids was dropped and a later envisaged end-July deadline is also being postponed, one of the people said.

Paschal Donohoe, the Minister for Finance, will allow the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) to extend its work to 2025. The Department of Finance has published a review of Nama, the agency set up to take over Irish banks’ property debts following the financial crash, to assess how the organisation is progressing towards achieving its objectives, The Irish Times reported. Nama was due to be wound up in 2021, after it had finished getting a return for the State from the loans.

Permanent TSB (PTSB) must shift a further €550 million in problem loans before it will meet its own targets – and get a hearing from regulators on lifting a ban on paying dividends, The Irish Times reported. The bank disclosed in its interim results, published on Thursday, that it has €1.7 billion of NPLs on its balance sheet, equivalent to 10 per cent of its loan book, having reduced the ratio from an eye-watering 28 per cent at the start of 2018. Last year, it sold €3.4 billion in non-performing mortgages in the face of considerable political opposition.

Mario Draghi is determined to launch one last economic stimulus push before his eight-year term as president of the European Central Bank ends in October, the Financial Times reported. The question is to what degree the rest of eurozone officialdom shares his ambition. In 2012, his first year in office, Mr Draghi saved the euro from a messy break-up by saying he would do “whatever it takes” to prove the single currency is here to stay — a pledge that was the harbinger of a radical loosening of monetary policy.

German factory executives have reported that industry conditions are in “free fall”, according to a survey that comes just hours before the European Central Bank’s policy decision, the Financial Times reported. The Ifo Institute’s manufacturing business climate index slumped to minus 4.3 in July from positive 1.3 the previous month. The reading was the lowest in more than nine years and echoes a separate survey released on Wednesday that pointed to mounting troubles in Europe’s powerhouse economy.

French fashion house Sonia Rykiel, whose brightly striped sweater dresses came to symbolise the rebel spirit of the French 1960s, has gone into liquidation, the Paris commercial court said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The brand’s founder, who was nicknamed “the Queen of Knitwear” by industry magazine Women’s Wear Daily, died in 2016, a few years after the family sold control of the label to Hong Kong investors. Sales failed to pick up under their ownership.

Russian coal and steel producer Mechel has asked banks to push back its debt repayments to 2024-2026 from 2020-2024, Interfax news agency cited an executive at Russian state lender Sberbank as saying on Wednesday. Mechel, once on the brink of bankruptcy, has been in restructuring talks with its lenders for several years, Reuters reported. Its debt to Russia’s three largest state-controlled banks - Sberbank, VTB and Gazprombank - stands at 347.5 billion roubles ($5.5 billion).