Moody’s Investors Service has changed the outlook on the UK’s credit rating to negative from stable following the EU referendum result, Bloomberg News reported. The agency said the result will herald “a prolonged period of uncertainty with negative implications for the country’s medium-term growth outlook”. “During the several years in which the UK will have to renegotiate its trade relations with the EU, Moody’s expects heightened uncertainty, diminished confidence and lower spending and investment to result in weaker growth,” the agency said.

As Russia’s government counts the months to an economic rebound, a bellwether of investment is nearing levels of distress last seen during the throes of a recession seven years ago, Bloomberg News reported. Building completions plunged 9 percent from a year earlier in May, the worst showing since October, even as industrial production grew for a second month and consumer indicators from real wages to unemployment improved.

Novo Banco is seeking to buy back up to 500m of senior debt, some of which is held by retail investors, at a discount to par as it looks to bolster its balance sheet, Reuters reported. The Portuguese bank has launched a discounted cash tender offer on eight euro and US dollar bonds, which have a face value of 2.39bn-equivalent, through an unmodified Dutch auction. Banks bought billions of subordinated debt at discounted prices during the financial crisis as a way of bolstering their balance sheets but senior purchases below par are much more unusual.

Dominic Chappell, the former owner of BHS, tried to pay for a family holiday to the Bahamas on company expenses and took a £90,000 loan from the department store chain to pay a personal tax bill, according to evidence submitted to MPs, The Guardian reported. The allegations were made by Darren Topp, chief executive of BHS, in a submission to the parliamentary committee investigating the demise of the company, which accuses Chappell of treating the retailer’s money as if it was his own personal funds.

Solocal Group began a court-backed process to restructure 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) of debt, its second reorganization in about two years, Bloomberg News reported. The French directories publisher asked the Commercial Court of Nanterre to appoint a restructuring adviser, triggering a default event on 350 million euros of June 2018 bonds, according to a statement Thursday. The Paris-based company’s shares and bonds tumbled. Solocal, previously called PagesJaunes, has warned it won’t be able to repay debt due in 2018 as online services lure users from traditional print directories.

Bond and currency traders seeking refuge as the results of the U.K. vote on membership in the European Union come in are finding that the world’s financial-market havens aren’t so safe, Bloomberg News reported. There were already signs that liquidity, the ability to trade without affecting prices, was deteriorating in some investment oases in advance of Thursday’s ballot. Liquidity has dropped by about a third in European sovereign bonds, according to David Page, a senior economist in London at AXA Investment Managers.

International banks have started looking at office space in Frankfurt as they consider whether they will need to shift some of their European operations out of London if Britain votes to leave the EU, the Financial Times reported. London is the world’s principal location for euro-denominated trading, a $2tn-a-day market, even though the UK is outside the single currency area.

German banks exploited a legal loophole that allowed two parties to claim ownership of the same shares, the financial watchdog will tell lawmakers this week, in schemes that could have cost the state billions of euros in tax over many years. This double ownership allowed both parties to claim tax rebates. It has provoked public anger in Germany and is an embarrassment for the Berlin government, which has campaigned for years to root out tax evasion around the world. The loophole was closed in 2012, with the means of claiming double ownership banned.

The National Asset Management Agency said it has now repaid 85 per cent of the €30.2 billion of senior bonds it issued to banks during the financial crisis to pay for their risky commercial property loans, the Irish Times reported. This comes after Nama redeemed a further €1 billion of such notes earlier today, marking its second such bond buyback so far this year. Senior bonds comprised 95 per cent of the deeply discounted payment it made to banks between 2010 and 2010 for their loans. The remaining 5 per cent is made up of subordinated bonds.

The European Central Bank said Wednesday it would start accepting junk-rated Greek government debt as collateral for the ECB’s regular lending to banks, reopening a cheap funding channel that could help breathe life into Greece’s struggling economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The decision to open a funding facility that had been shut for 16 months should help to restore confidence in the Greek banking sector and could lead to the partial lifting of capital controls in the coming days, economists and bankers said.