Italian utility Enel SpA has called a halt to further acquisitions in Brazil for the time being as it gears up to complete asset sales of up to 1.5 billion euros (1.34 billion pounds) in the second half of the year, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. "I don't see appetite for further acquisitions in Brazil at this stage," Enel CEO Francesco Starace told analysts on a conference call on Tuesday after the company released first-half results.

The International Monetary Fund has warned eurozone governments that they need to give Greece more long-term debt relief to stop the country from being locked out of financial markets as Athens prepares for life outside a bailout programme, the Financial Times reported. In a swipe at EU capitals that have pushed back at Greek demands for greater debt relief, the IMF has calculated that Greece’s long-term debt costs will be unsustainable in 20 years’ time because of the high budget surplus targets demanded by European creditors as part of Athens’ post-bailout conditions.  Wit

To wire a car, you need copper. To make batteries, you need zinc. And to build a house, you need both of these metals and more -- steel for the pipes, aluminum for the frames and tin for the roof, the Financial Times reported. Base metals like these are used in thousands of different ways in nearly every industry, so many analysts look at their prices for a read on the global economy. Recently the Bank of England’s Tom Wise wrote about this dynamic and found that metal consumption tracks PPP-weighted global GDP growth.

The Government should invest €22 million in education, training and access to apprenticeships in an effort to halve long-term youth unemployment by the end of 2019, the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI) said in its pre-budget submission, The Irish Times reported. Young people from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds with limited formal qualifications should have greater access to apprenticeships, while schemes should be developed across the country to “provide supports and address barriers”, the organisation said.

Ryanair has invited pilots’ union representatives to talks in anticipation of a fourth strike at the airline this week, The Irish Times reported. The move came as pilots employed by Ryanair in Germany voted for industrial action in support of a pay claim. Members of the Irish Airline Pilots’ Association (Ialpa) – part of trade union Fórsa – plan a fourth one-day strike on Friday, August 3rd in a dispute over base transfers, promotions, leave and other issues.

U.K. consumers maintained their appetite for debt in June as the Bank of England considers whether to raise interest rates for only the second time since 2007, Bloomberg News reported. Unsecured lending rose 8.8 percent from a year earlier, the same rate as in the previous two months, the U.K. central bank said on Monday. Consumers added 1.6 billion pounds ($2.1 billion) to their debts in June -- above the average of the previous six months. Credit cards are accounting for an increasing share of consumer credit, outpacing personal loans, overdrafts and car finance, the BOE said.

Dozens of senior executives at Ireland’s biggest bank have been poached by rivals expanding in Dublin because of Brexit, prompting its chief executive to warn that the country’s stringent pay cap makes it hard to keep them, the Financial Times reported. Bernard Byrne, head of Allied Irish Banks, told the Financial Times that a “mid-teens” percentage of its 200 most senior managers have left since its privatisation last year, many hired by companies that are bulking up in Ireland ahead of Brexit, a list that includes Bank of America, Barclays and Citigroup.

Greece is planning a return to the markets in a bid to regain its status as a “normal” country. If the government can announce by the end of the year its program for tapping the markets in 2019, and repeat this exercise each year for the following 12 months, the plan will have worked, an official familiar with the matter said. After losing more than a quarter of its economic output during the past decade, Europe’s most indebted country is now trying to stand on its own feet again, Bloomberg News reported.

The number of people in England and Wales filing for insolvency hit a more than six-year high in the second quarter, adding to conflicting economic signals for Bank of England officials as they consider whether to raise interest rates next week, Reuters reported. Seasonally adjusted data from the Insolvency Service showed 28,951 people registered as insolvent between April and June — up 27 percent on a year ago and the largest total since early 2012 when Britain last flirted with recession.

The UK financial regulator is planning to crack down on peer-to-peer lenders and crowdfunding platforms, following concerns that investors could be taking on more risk than they realise, the Finacnial Times reported. In a long-awaited review of the sector published on Friday, the Financial Conduct Authority proposed tougher rules for the peer-to-peer industry, which has grown dramatically in the last decade as banks have retreated from high-risk lending and interest rates have fallen.