For German businessman Ralf Schlesselmann, these are heady times. “We’re totally maxing out,” he says. Mr Schlesselmann runs a 100-year-old family-owned wooden-pallet maker in Asendorf near Hanover that is working almost round the clock to cope with surging orders, the Financial Times reported. “We’re seeing increased demand from all sectors,” he says. “We’re at very close to full capacity.” The humble wooden pallet is an unremarkable thing.

The U.K. Financial Reporting Council opened a probe into KPMG LLP’s audits of Carillion Plc, after the builder collapsed under a mountain of debt earlier this month, Bloomberg News reported. The FRC will examine KPMG’s work from 2014 and whether the auditor breached any "ethical and technical standards," the accounting regulator said in a statement Monday. The FRC will also look at how KPMG recognized revenue on significant contracts and its accounting for pensions. Carillion, a U.K.

Swiss company Schmolz + Bickenbach has been chosen by a Strasbourg court to buy troubled French steelmaker Ascometal, the court said on Monday, with Schmolz + Bickenbach’s bid prevailing over a rival one from Liberty House, Reuters reported. Ascometal, which makes specialty steel and employs around 1,300 workers, filed for court protection last November, and takeover offers for the company had come under the scrutiny of the Strasbourg court. Like Ascometal, Schmolz + Bickenbach is a producer of specialist steel products.

The rationale for merging some of Europe’s biggest lenders is compelling. That’s the view of many financial executives who met at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Bloomberg News reported. A decade after the financial crisis, some of the region’s biggest lenders are facing declining revenue as interest rates linger near record lows, while legal bills and capital demands have eroded profit. Combinations of consumer-banking operations could help pare costs and fend off competition from fintech startups.

British construction outsourcing company Carillion Plc attempted to “wriggle out of its obligations” to pensioners for the last decade, according to Parliament’s Work and Pensions Select Committee. The committee chair, Frank Field, condemned Carillion’s inability to perform its pension obligations while “shelling out dividends and handsome pay packets for those at the top,” Reuters reported.

The Strasbourg court in charge of selling troubled French steelmaker Ascometal has raised questions over public funds as part of the bid by UK-based metals and industrials firm Liberty House, a union representative at the hearing told Reuters. Asked about the court’s questioning of the bid’s funding, a spokesman for Liberty House said: “We are requesting no support from the State. We have been offered carbon refunds that are available to all businesses. Regional funding supports our growth plan ...

Former motor racing champion Niki Lauda’s winning bid for insolvent Austrian airline Niki beat that of British Airways owner IAG by 4 million euros ($5 million), a German newspaper reported on Sunday. Lauda offered 30.3 million euros for the carrier, plus a 16.5 million euros liquidity injection, German weekly Bild am Sonntag said, citing sources close to the negotiations, Reuters reported. The sale to Lauda, announced on Monday, undid an agreed deal with IAG after two courts ruled that the insolvency proceedings had to move to Austria from Germany.

Thursday’s European Central Bank policy meeting did not look like it was going to be an exciting start to Mario Draghi’s year — but a bullish account of the final vote of 2017 has changed that. The minutes of the December meeting, published this month, signalled that the ECB president faces mounting threats to his go-slow approach to withdrawing the bank’s crisis-era support, which will be under scrutiny on Thursday, the Financial Times reported.

A London court has sided with Franklin Templeton Investment Management and Russia's Sberbank in a ruling relating to International Bank of Azerbaijan's (IBA) debt restructuring, potentially delaying the process, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Last year, state-owned IBA proposed a plan to restructure $3.3 billion of its debt and said in July it had received approval from creditors holding 93.9 percent of the affected credits.

Unsecured creditors of the failed airline Air Berlin should not expect to recover any of their claims, according to an insolvency report on Wednesday. The report, written by insolvency manager and administrators Lucas Floether and Frank Kebekus, said any remaining hope for creditors to recover assets evaporated after Lufthansa scrapped plans to buy Air Berlin's Niki unit for 189 million euros (£165 million), the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.