Europe’s economy has started 2018 in near-record-breaking fashion. That is clearly good news, but markets need to prepare for the inevitable pullback, The Wall Street Journal reported. It may not be right now, but it will have trouble getting much better. There were a string of remarkable figures in Wednesday’s flash eurozone purchasing managers index. The overall composite PMI came in at 58.6 for January, up from 58.1 in December, compiler IHS Markit said. It is yet another in a long run of economic surprises, beating expectations.

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.

Ministers are coming under increased pressure to release risk assessments on Carillion made in the months before the contractor’s collapse, the Financial Times reported. The Labour opposition has used an obscure piece of Parliamentary procedure to try to force the government to publish how they perceived the condition of all 30 or so “strategic suppliers” to the state. This “motion for a return” was passed by default on Wednesday night without a vote in the House of Commons.

Former motor racing champion Niki Lauda has won the bidding for the Niki airline he founded, convincing the insolvent carrier’s administrators in marathon talks and undoing an agreed deal with British Airways owner IAG, Reuters reported. The previously agreed sale of Niki to IAG fell through after two courts ruled the insolvency proceedings had to move to Austria from Germany. That cleared the way for other parties such as budget airline Ryanair (RYA.I) and Lauda to again bid for the carrier, which most recently was part of failed German airline Air Berlin.

EU finance ministers have pledged to revitalise a half-finished project to strengthen eurozone banks, saying the disagreements that stymied progress should be resolved by the summer, the Financial Times reported. At a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, the French and German finance ministers were among those stressing the need to unblock talks on the eurozone’s banking union to build momentum for other reforms to the currency bloc.

The European Union, faced with forces of disintegration, is mostly holding its ground. This year will test whether it can also advance. The bloc and its political establishment have had to prove their resilience repeatedly over the past decade, in the face of challenges ranging from financial calamity to populism, The Wall Street Journal reported. Fixing underlying problems, however, is proving more difficult than merely surviving.

A company connected to an advisory firm to the family of businessman Sean Quinn is allegedly behind the “cash extraction” of some $15 million (€12.26 million) from an Indian company in a number of bogus transactions, it has been claimed at the Commercial Court, the Irish Times reported. The alleged extraction is part of a scheme designed to put $455 million in Quinn group assets beyond the reach of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), it is claimed.

EU creditors are to start sensitive talks on how to structure possible debt relief for Greece as Athens eyes an exit from eight years of international bailouts this summer, the Financial Times reported. Eurozone finance ministers praised the Greek government’s latest reform attempts in a meeting in Brussels on Monday and are expected to sign off the country’s third bailout review formally once outstanding reform measures are completed in the coming weeks.

Few countries attract as much disdain from economists as Germany. Berlin is accused of running an excessively prudent budget and German companies of paying their workers too little: This stinginess -- so the accusation goes -- has contributed to global instability by making it harder for Germany’s euro-zone partners to climb their way out of the crisis, a Bloomberg View reported.

The UK is one of the only major markets where house prices are unlikely to grow in 2018, according to new forecasts from Fitch Ratings, the Financial Times reported. The ratings agency’s annual housing and mortgage outlook predicted average prices in the UK will be flat this year, with declines in London and the South East due to “Brexit uncertainty, stretched affordabliity and low income growth”. The only housing markets assessed by Fitch with a worse outlook for 2018 were Greece, where it predicted a 2 per cent decline, and Norway, where prices could drop 5 per cent.