Glencore, the miner and commodity trader, has announced plans to repurchase up to $1.25bn of bonds as part of an ongoing plan to reduce debt and leverage, the Financial Times reported. The buy back is targeting bonds that mature in 2018 and 2019 with investors being given until the end of the month to tender their notes, writes Neil Hume in London. The world’s biggest miners are slashing costs and cutting their debt burdens after being shaken to the core by the worst price rout in a generation.

British financial-services companies will get no special favors in Brexit negotiations from Prime Minister Theresa May, who wants to change the relationship between the government and the City of London, Bloomberg News reported. According to three senior figures in May’s administration, the government will refuse to prioritize the protection of the sector after the U.K. has left the European Union. Her team has also dismissed the key business demand for an interim deal with the EU to help ease the transition out of the bloc, one of the people said.

Germany’s largest bank appears in danger, sending stock markets worldwide on a wild ride. Yet the biggest source of worry is less about its finances than a vast tangle of unknowns — not least, whether Europe can muster the will to mount a rescue in the event of an emergency, the International New York Times reported. In short, fears that Europe lacks the cohesion to avoid a financial crisis may be enhancing the threat of one.

The Greek government is at war with itself, and that is threatening to derail a key plank of Greece’s bailout, which consists of selling state assets to pay down debt and bring in foreign investment. Leaders in the ruling left-wing Syriza party are touring the world, from New York to Shanghai, lobbying investors to come to Greece and help kick-start its depressed economy. But Syriza’s roots in the Marxist, anti-globalization left make privatization a bitter pill, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Telefonica SA’s efforts to reduce its debt pile suffered a new blow after the Spanish carrier was forced to scrap the initial public offering of its infrastructure unit, Telxius Telecom SA, as demand from investors proved inadequate, Bloomberg News reported today. Telefonica will continue “to analyze strategic alternatives” for Telxius, the Spanish carrier said yesterday. The decision to call off the sale was reached together with the banks that were managing the IPO, the company said.

Research by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP showed that U.K. company pension deficits fell by 20 billion pounds ($26 billion) in September but remained close to the previous month’s record high of 710 billion pounds, Bloomberg News reported today. The funding gap for defined-benefit pensions, which pay retirees fixed amounts based on factors including length of service, stood at 690 billion pounds as of September 29, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

Germany will not help ailing lenders such as Deutsche Bank, senior lawmakers in Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative bloc said today, as resistance grew to any possibility of staging a rescue, Reuters reported. Concerns over the stability of Germany's largest bank pushed its U.S-listed shares down by more than 8 percent in New York on Thursday after they touched a record low in Europe this week. Seeking to reassure investors, Deutsche said that its trading clients remained largely supportive. The immediate cause of Deutsche's crisis is a fine of up to $14 billion from the U.S.

A new petition is urging the British government to ban cold-calling about pensions and investments in a bid to protect people from fraudsters, the Telegraph reported today. Financial advisers – backed by former pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann – have started a petition calling for it to be illegal to call or email someone unbidden to discuss their pension or investment opportunities. Fraudsters often lure in savers with offers of a “free pension review” before encouraging them to invest in high risk, unregulated investments or transfer their pension to suspicious schemes.

As the debate over how to carry out Brexit intensifies, the City of London finds itself in the firing line, the Wall Street Journal reported today. To some hard-line Brexiters, repeated warnings from bankers about the costs of quitting the European single market and losing passporting rights—which allow U.K.-based firms to sell financial services anywhere in the European Union—smack of special pleading. Passporting is a red herring, they say, because the U.K.

Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo sacked her finance minister on Wednesday and gave the job to the influential economy minister, saying a reshuffle was needed to make the government's wide-reaching economic stimulus plan more effective, Reuters reported today. Since winning an election last October, Szydlo's Law and Justice (PiS) party has pledged to spend billions of euros of private and public money to boost growth and wealth in Poland, while also giving the state more say in the economy.