Aegean Marine Petroleum Network, one of the world’s largest traders of shipping fuel, has filed for bankruptcy protection in New York, allowing the company to undergo a restructuring with the help of rival trader Mercuria as a precursor to putting itself up for sale, the Financial Times reported. The move into Chapter 11 follows the confirmation last week of a write-off of $200m of expected payments that Aegean said “lacked economic substance”, adding that another $100m may have been “misappropriated through fraudulent activities”.

Europe’s top banks may have survived a milestone test of their resilience but strengthened balance sheets count for little when they generate such meager returns compared with U.S. rivals, investors say. The European Banking Authority stress test results on Friday showed the sector in reasonable financial health, with a clean sweep of 48 lenders judged capable of withstanding economic shocks like a crash in real estate or bond prices, Reuters reported.

Faith in the European economy continues to wane with two surveys of economic confidence back to levels not seen since 2016, the Financial Times reported. The Sentix survey of 1,000 investors reported the lowest reading in its headline eurozone index since October 2016. The gauge has fallen for the past three months to read 8.8 in November. Meanwhile, the Ifo Institute said on Monday its economic climate measure for the bloc was also the lowest since the middle of 2016 in the fourth quarter.

Brexit uncertainty contributed to a sharp slowdown in Britain’s dominant services sector in October, according to a survey of executives. The IHS Markit services purchasing managers’ index revealed the slowest pace of growth since the snowstorms at the start of the year, the Financial Times reported. The headline reading fell to 52.2 in October, down from 53.9 in September and far below City economists’ expectations of 53.8. Monday’s survey is the most important economic data yet published to suggest that fraught Brexit negotiations are harming Britain’s real economy.

Eurozone finance ministers have urged Italy to bow to Brussels’ calls to redraft a bud­get plan that breaks European spending rules, brushing aside attempts by Rome to defend the fiscal expansion as key to reviving the country’s economy, the Financial Times reported. Ministers called on Italy’s populist government on Monday to engage in talks with Brussels on a revised draft budget for 2019, backing the European Commission’s view that the plans violate previous commitments by Rome to shrink the deficit next year.

Crawshaw Group plc said two Ernst & Young LLP executive were appointed as joint administrators, after the UK meat retailer said last week it did not have sufficient cash to restructure, Reuters reported. The company joins a growing list of British retailers that have been forced to seek protection from creditors after being hit hard by competition from online shopping platforms and a rise in costs from the pound’s Brexit-induced weakness.

Italian manufacturers have reported the first contraction in the sector since 2016, according to an IHS markit survey, in the latest sign of a broader slowdown in the Italian economy, the Financial Times reported. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for Italy fell to 49.2 in October, the lowest reading in 46 months. The closely-monitored survey had been teetering on the brink in September, when it held at the 50 line that separates expansion from contraction.

The drop in global equities in October was remarkable for its extent, the frequency of consecutive negative days, and the synchronised decline in all the major markets, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. The most likely fundamental trigger for the severity of the equity correction was an increase in investors’ perceptions of downside, or even recessionary, risks to the global economy. Dramatic talk about trade wars obviously exacerbated the drop in confidence.

An “unprecedented” number of price rises from energy suppliers this year has caused UK household energy debt to surge by 24 per cent over the past year, research has found. At this time of year, most households have usually built up credit with their energy supplier, the Financial Times reported. Yet, despite the summer heatwave and warmer than usual autumn temperatures, price increases mean 3m households owe a total of £400m to their energy supplier, according to research by uSwitch, the energy switching service.

A group of mostly northern EU countries are lobbying for the eurozone’s bailout fund to be given a greater role in scrutinising national budgets, as fiscal hardliners step up their criticism of Brussels for inadequately policing Europe’s deficit rules, the Financial Times reported. Ten governments including the Netherlands and Ireland want the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to be given the authority to assess the financial health of eurozone economies, powers that are currently held exclusively by the European Commission. The ESM, set up at the height of the eurozone cr