British state-controlled lender the Royal Bank of Scotland has doubled its funding pot to support small businesses to 6 billion pounds ($7.8 billion), but says the extra cash is no longer primarily for Brexit-proofing businesses, Reuters reported. NatWest, the biggest trading arm of RBS, said it had topped up its so-called Growth Fund in response to high demand from firms in industries including green energy and technology. The lender previously topped up the fund from 1 billion pounds to 3 billion pounds in October.

The eurozone’s manufacturing sector remains stuck in a rut as its two largest economies missed expectations and continued to contract in April, according to a closely watched survey of industry executives, the Financial Times reported. The IHS Markit Purchasing Managers’ Index for manufacturing in Germany rose slightly to 44.5 from 44.1 previously, but this was below expectations in a Reuters poll of an increase to 45. The index for the French manufacturing sector fell to 49.6 from 49.7, despite anticipation of a rise to 50.

Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into corruption allegations against a junior transport minister who serves as economic adviser to Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, judicial sources said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Armando Siri, a prominent member of the right-wing League party, is suspected by prosecutors of taking bribes to help companies operating in the renewable energy sector, the sources said. Siri did not respond to requests from Reuters for comment, but was quoted by Italian newspapers as denying all wrongdoing.

President Nicolas Maduro is funneling cashflow from Venezuelan oil sales through Russian state energy giant Rosneft as he seeks to evade U.S. sanctions designed to oust him from power, according to sources and documents reviewed by Reuters. The sales are the latest sign of the growing dependence of Venezuela’s cash-strapped government on Russia as the United States tightens a financial noose around Maduro, who it describes as a dictator, Reuters reported.

The Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe has ruled out suspending the work of Nama pending the final report of the investigation into the sale of the agency’s Northern Ireland loan portfolio, The Irish Times reported. In June 2017, the Government appointed retired High Court judge John Cooke to investigate Nama’s £1.24 billion (€1.43 billion) sale in 2014 of the Northern portfolio to US distressed-debt firm, Cerberus.

British shoppers ignored worries about an impending Brexit deadline and spent heavily in March, official data showed on Thursday, supporting the country’s sluggish economy while companies were cutting back on investment, Reuters reported. Retail sales volumes surged by the most in nearly two-and-a-half years in annual terms, leaping by 6.7 percent. That was way above all forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists.

Ukrainian tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky won a major victory on Thursday in his battle with the government over the nationalization of the country’s largest bank as a court ruled the change of ownership was illegal, Reuters reported. The ruling is a big setback for the government, which wrested PrivatBank from Kolomoisky, a co-founder of the bank, in December 2016. PrivatBank was nationalized as part of a clean-up of the banking system backed by the International Monetary Fund, which supports Ukraine with a $3.9 billion loan program.

The German government has halved its growth forecast for 2019 to just 0.5 per cent, highlighting the extent to which wider conditions in the global economy have damaged the health of the eurozone’s economic powerhouse, the Financial Times reported. Peter Altmaier, economics minister, said on Wednesday that the downgrade from an earlier projection of 1 per cent was “a wake-up call” for an economy that over the past decade had experienced one of its most sustained periods of growth in modern history but was now under stress from a global economic slowdown and political uncertainty.

Deutsche Bank has estimated that it processed at least €175m of dirty money for Russian criminals between 2011 and 2014 and has braced itself for potential fines, litigation and prosecution of individual managers in response, the Financial Times reported.

GAM moved closer to drawing a line under the problems that have engulfed the Swiss fund manager with a deal to sell about £600m of bonds that will complete the liquidation of funds at the heart of its crisis, the Financial Times reported. The news from the Zurich-based group sent its shares up 14 per cent on Wednesday. It stunned the market last summer when it suspended Tim Haywood, a London-based investment director who oversaw the group’s SFr11bn absolute return bond funds (ARBF).