Aim is supposed to help young, risky high-growth companies access money from investors before they move on to the main market, the Financial Times reported. So why is Renold, a 154-year-old manufacturer, considering a transfer the other way? The maker of industrial chain, gears and couplings said it could switch to Aim within weeks. The uncharitable might say a company with a market capitalisation of about £72m belongs on London’s junior market. Renold has fallen fast in the past few years after being crunched by the manufacturing slowdown after the financial crisis.

Markets, to paraphrase Nobel prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling, often forget that they keep forgetting. That’s especially true when it comes to the intractable challenges posed by global debt, Bloomberg News reported. Since 2008, governments around the world have looked for relatively painless ways to lower high debt levels, a central cause of the last crisis. Cutting interest rates to zero or below made borrowing easier to service. Quantitative easing and central bank support made it easier to buy debt.

Interserve said it had reached a deal with its lenders to defer a debt payment due early next year and was considering handing them its profitable building materials business RMDK as it works to avert a Carillion-style collapse, Reuters reported. “Interserve continues to be in constructive discussions with its lenders, who are fully supportive of Interserve’s business plan and management team,” the British construction and services company said in a statement on Friday.

A total of 10 former employees of Danske Bank A/S in Estonia were apprehended over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported. Estonian prosecutors suspect they deliberately helped criminals from the former Soviet Union launder money, for personal gain. In Denmark, where Danske is the biggest bank, the government made clear it’s not in favor of clemency. “It’s very important to come down hard on this case,” Danish Business Minister Rasmus Jarlov told Bloomberg.

Interserve Plc has merged two of its businesses to simplify its organization, the British support services and construction firm said on Wednesday, days after starting rescue talks with creditors, Reuters reported. The company said it combined its citizen services division, which handles everything from rehabilitation of low-risk offenders to education and workplace training and nursing care, with its support services unit that manages outsourced facilities. The support services unit is managed directly by Interserve CEO Debbie White.

Italy’s deal with the European Union to defuse its simmering budget dispute is adding to concerns about the country’s real economic problem: a lack of growth, the Wall Street Journal reported. By reining in its spending plans under pressure from financial markets and the EU’s Brussels-based executive, the European Commission, Rome has avoided EU disciplinary proceedings for now. But Italy’s antiestablishment government is also left with few policy plans for boosting growth in a stagnant economy.

U.K. regulators proposed sweeping changes to rules governing British audit firms on Tuesday in moves designed to increase competition, prevent conflicts of interest and restore public confidence in an industry tarnished by an accounting scandal that led to the collapse of one of Britain’s largest construction companies, the Wall Street Journal reported. The measures, if implemented, would see audit firms separate their auditing and consulting operations, introduce two-firm audits for large companies and replace the current auditing regulator.

The Irish government has unveiled further contingency plans to cope with a potential no-deal Brexit, identifying affected sectors that would require up to 45 pieces of emergency legislation, the Irish Times reported. The plans, published yesterday would include the purchase of land at Dublin Port and Rosslare to prevent congestion from new customs, sanitary and animal health checks at the sea ports.

Global equity markets gave up earlier gains and continued a weeklong sell-off on Wednesday after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced a fresh interest rate hike and said “some” further rate hikes would be necessary in the year ahead, Reuters reported. The decision slashed more than 700 points off of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and sent MSCI’s index of global stocks down nearly 0.9 percent for the day. The index is down nearly 13 percent since the start of December due to concerns that global economic growth is slowing.

European Union lawmakers and governments yesterday reached a political agreement on new rules for the money that banks should set aside against possible losses from new loans that turn sour, Reuters reported. The compromise softens an initial proposal by the European Commission, but less than sought by the EU parliament, which accepted a stricter provisioning calendar for banks. The rules are meant to avoid a future build-up of bad loans at banks, which have hampered the EU’s economic recovery after the 2007-08 financial crisis.