Britain’s biggest labour union said on Tuesday it launched legal action against Carillion on behalf of former workers of the company, whose jobs were made redundant following the collapse of the British outsourcer in January, Reuters reported. The members were employed by Carillion’s group company Planned Maintenance Engineering Ltd on a contract at Britain’s GCHQ spy agency headquarters in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

The creditors of Agrokor, Croatia’s indebted food producer and retailer, on Wednesday voted to approve a debt settlement deal that will help to resolve the company’s troubles, Reuters reported. Agrokor, the largest private company in the Balkans with 60,000 staff, was put under state-run administration in April 2017, crippled by debts built up during an ambitious expansion drive. Its creditors include local and foreign banks, bondholders and suppliers.

Eurozone manufacturers battled a sharp increase in costs in June as global trade tensions pushed up prices of steel and other metals, the Financial Times reported. Business confidence sagged among Germany factory executives, who fretted over a “cooling market, tariffs and supply constraints”, according to IHS Markit, which compiles the closely-watched purchasing managers’ surveys for the major European economies. Growth in the powerhouse sector had “consistently slowed” in Germany through the first half of 2018, IHS Markit said.

Thousands of struggling buy-to-let investors are facing a dramatic increase in mortgage payments over the next four years, the Irish Times reported. A study by Central Bank staff says that many borrowers currently on interest-only payments are set to switch to a traditional amortising mortgage between now and 2022. That means they will have to start paying down the principal of the loan, a move that will significantly increase their monthly repayments. Close to half of buy-to-let mortgages examined in the study were interest-only.

Deutsche Bank AG, which is in the throes of a global restructuring involving thousands of job cuts, is zeroing in on an Asian market where an unprecedented bad-loan clean-up offers the potential for a credit bonanza, Bloomberg News reported. In India, where bankruptcy law changes have injected urgency into efforts to restructure $210 billion of stressed assets, Deutsche Bank sees an opportunity to generate outsized returns by refinancing and trading debt, according to Amit Khattar, Asia-Pacific co-head of global credit trading. Khattar is considering adding to his team.

Prosecutors in Cologne are preparing their first indictments in a tax-evasion probe involving some of the biggest names in finance that cost the German treasury billions of euros, according to people familiar with the matter. Investigators are looking at the role of dozens of banks, brokerages, accounting companies, and law firms in the deals, and the cases involve hundreds of individuals, said the people, who declined to be identified because they’re not authorized to discuss the probe, Bloomberg News reported.

Greece exits its third international bailout in August, but without further debt relief it may not be able to sustain market access in the long run, the International Monetary Fund said on Friday. Greece and its European partners agreed last week on a set of debt measures to help the country emerge smoothly from the program, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The deal significantly improved medium-term debt sustainability but "longer prospects remain uncertain," the IMF said.

Debt at UK listed companies has soared to hit a record high of £390bn as companies have scrambled to maintain dividend payouts in response to shareholder demand despite weak profitability, the Financial Times reported.

The surge in the price of oil has pushed eurozone inflation above the European Central Bank’s target, but policymakers in Frankfurt are expected to ignore the rise as broader price pressures across the region remain weak, the Financial Times reported. Headline inflation rose to 2 per cent in the year to June from 1.9 per cent in May, according to a preliminary estimate published by the European Commission’s statistics bureau, Eurostat, on Friday.

European Union leaders agreed on Friday the ESM bailout fund should play a bigger role in a more integrated euro zone, but left the details of that to December and difficult issues like a euro zone budget or deposit insurance for an undefined future, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Deeper euro zone integration has been championed by French President Emmanuel Macron since his election last year, but has run into opposition from Germany and its allies, wary of sharing more responsibility with less fiscally prudent governments.