A trade war with the United States looms. Populists have taken power in Italy, posing a new threat to the euro. Growth is sluggish, and there is even talk of another banking crisis, the International New York Times reported. It would not seem the ideal time to put the brakes on Europe’s economy. But that is what the European Central Bank is preparing to do. For more than a decade, the central bank unleashed a wave of cash to stimulate growth, effectively saving Europe from the wrenching consequences of its debt crisis.

Germany’s ThyssenKrupp, under increasing pressure from the activist hedge fund Elliott Management, is scrambling to renegotiate the terms of a proposed European merger with Tata Steel, according to people familiar with talks between the companies. The industrial group and its Indian rival are in the final stages of creating a steelmaking powerhouse with revenues of €15bn that would be Europe’s second-largest producer of the metal, behind ArcelorMittal, the Financial Times reported.

Italy poses a big risk to the stability of Europe, despite the recent ceasefire between the new coalition government and the markets — and Brexit will not protect Britain from the fallout, some of Britain’s top financiers have warned. Norman Blackwell, chairman of Lloyds and one of the few senior pro-Brexit figures in the City, suggested Italy’s political turmoil could easily recur because of the challenges of maintaining the fiscal discipline necessary for a European single currency, the Financial Times reported.

First the good news. The ECB has signalled that its key interest rate will remain at zero until after the summer of next year, the Irish Times reported. So the regime of rock bottom interest rates which has benefited Irish borrowers is set to continue well into 2019, with many analysts saying interest rates will not rise until December 2019 or early 2020. Those with tracker mortgages will continue to benefit from extraordinarily low rates, while borrowers on standard variable rates should not see any increase either. Competition for new borrowers will continue.

Greece’s parliament approved the last big austerity package of its eight-year bailout program Thursday, preparing the country for its full return to financing itself on bond markets beginning this summer, The Wall Street Journal reported. Greek lawmakers from the ruling coalition, led by the left-wing Syriza party of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, passed a package of measures including pension cuts, income-tax rises and privatizations. The overhauls are required for the country to receive about €11 billion of financing from the eurozone’s bailout fund.

Jean-Charles Naouri, chief executive and controlling shareholder of French retailer Groupe Casino, is seen in Parisian circles as the ‘godfather of retail’. In the three decades since the 69-year-old mathematician, former French civil servant and Rothschild banker moved into the private sector, he has constructed a retail empire spanning Europe to Brazil.

Russian gold miner Petropavlovsk, which is battling a shareholder attempt to remove its board, has agreed to provide a last minute bridge loan to a Hong Kong iron ore company in which it owns a 31 per cent stake, the Financial Times reported. The London-listed company said it would provide $29.75m to IRC to enable it to meet a June payment on a loan to ICBC, which was used to fund a mine near the border of China. Petropavlovsk also said it is in “advanced” talks with a major Russian bank to refinance the entire $340m project loan.

British lawmakers are pressing the accounting regulator to divulge details of the misconduct that prompted it to slap unprecedented fines on accountants PwC and a former senior partner over a 2014 audit of now-collapsed retail chain BHS, Reuters reported. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) overnight fined PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of Britain’s Big Four accounting firms, a record 6.5 million pounds ($9 million) and former partner Steve Denison 325,000 pounds over the audit.

Coupons on 525 million pounds ($701.40 million) of debt underpinned by retirement home operator Four Seasons will not be paid, the issuers of the notes said on Wednesday. The owners of Four Seasons recently agreed a deal with investment firm H/2 Capital Partners to restructure the group, transferring ownership to a new owner controlled by its creditors, Reuters reported. The boards of Elli Finance (UK) Plc and Elli Investments, the issuers of the notes, said their respective boards “have concluded that they will not be in a position to pay the coupons due under the Notes on 15 June 2018”.

Shareholders in Steinhoff on Wednesday sued Deloitte for damages in a Dutch court, accusing the auditor of failures in the accounting scandal that brought the South Africa-based global retailer to the brink of collapse, the Financial Times reported. VEB, the Dutch investor rights group, said it brought the lawsuit in the Rotterdam district court as Deloitte had “seriously failed in its statutory task as auditor” by giving an unqualified audit to Steinhoff before the owner of the UK’s Poundland and Mattress Firm in the US revealed a black hole of more than €5bn in its accounts.