In the June referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union, 61 percent of the voters in the city of Sunderland voted to quit. As a result, 6,700 jobs at Nissan’s factory there are now in peril as the Japanese carmaker weighs whether to build the next version of its Qashqai model in the northeast of soon-to-be-independent England. So you have to wonder whether Mackems, as the locals are called, might vote differently if they had a second chance. The economic implications of life outside of the EU are starting to sink in.

A Canadian rating agency has confirmed Portugal’s only investment-grade credit rating in a decision that ensures Lisbon will continue to benefit from the European Central Bank’s government bond-buying programme, the Financial Times reported. DBRS on Friday maintained the country’s BBB (low) rating with a “stable” outlook, despite earlier expressing concerns over low growth and high debt.

The European Union must choose between letting Rome hike its budget deficit to cope with the costs of migrants and an earthquake, or siding with the “Hungarian way” of building barriers, Italy’s economy minister said, the Irish Times reported. The Italian government has been stepping up anti-Brussels rhetoric after announcing an expansionary 2017 budget plan on October 15th ahead of a referendum on constitutional reform that may decide prime minister Matteo Renzi’s political future. “Europe must choose which side to take.

Big international banks are preparing to move some of their operations out of Britain in early 2017 due to the uncertainty over the country’s future relationship with the European Union, a top banking official said, the Irish Times reported. Writing in the Observer newspaper, Anthony Browne, the chief executive of lobby group the British Bankers’ Association, said the public and political debate was “taking us in the wrong direction” and businesses could not wait until the last minute.

British MPs have backed stripping billionaire Philip Green of his knighthood over the collapse of BHS department store, in a symbolic move that will raise pressure on the tycoon over his promises to resolve the company’s pension problems, the Irish Times reported. Mr Green owned BHS for 15 years before he sold the loss-making 180-outlet chain to Dominic Chappell, a serial bankrupt with no retail experience, for just one pound (€1.11) last year. It went into administration in April and the last of its stores closed in August, with the loss of some 11,000 jobs.

A wave of protests against home repossessions has swept Greece in recent weeks, prompting fears for the safety of workers carrying out the forced transfers and threatening plans to clean up the country’s banking system, The Wall Street Journal reported. The rise in sometimes-violent activism by leftist groups comes as banks in Europe’s most depressed economy push to resume seizures and auctions of properties, especially commercial real estate, to pare their books of bad loans.

The European Central Bank kicked back a decision on whether to boost its €1.7 trillion ($1.86 trillion) stimulus, disappointing investors who had hoped for greater clarity from Frankfurt and raising the stakes for its next policy meeting in December, The Wall Street Journal reported. At a short news conference, ECB President Mario Draghi said policy makers hadn’t even discussed whether to extend the central bank’s €80 billion-a-month bond-purchase program, which is due to end in five months. As that deadline approaches, investors have been growing nervous.

When Elvira Nabiullina took over as governor of Russia’s central bank, she came face to face with a sobering statistic: regulators listed as many as 150 banks that were regularly involved in dubious transactions, the Financial Times reported. Today, after an unprecedented three-year purge of the dark corners of Russian finance, that number is down to “no more than about 10”, Ms Nabiullina says. And she is only just getting started.

Ireland’s national debt stood at €200.1 billion at the end of June, equating to 77.8 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), the Irish Times reported. New figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show this represented a €6.5 billion drop on the previous quarter, when debt represented more than 80 per cent of GDP. At the height of the financial crisis, Ireland’s debt was more than 120 per cent of GDP. Last year it fell from 105 per cent to 78 per cent as a result of a 26 per cent leap in GDP linked to the relocation of multinational assets here.

In recent months, the European Central Bank has been caught on the horns of a dilemma — between a lacklustre economic recovery it fears cannot stand on its own two feet and German hostility to any attempt to extend the ECB’s ultra-loose monetary policy, the Financial Times reported. Up to now, the ECB has been able to sidestep the controversy. Britain’s decision to leave the EU has caused less fallout in the eurozone economy than some had feared, relieving the central bank of the need to carry out emergency measures.