Switzerland’s central bank lowered its key interest for a fifth straight meeting of its policy makers, while its Swedish counterpart left rates unchanged Thursday for the first time since mid-2024, the Wall Street Journal reported. Economists expect both central banks to leave their key rates unchanged over coming months. Both have moved rapidly to remove the restraints they placed on economic activity as they sought to tame an inflation surge in 2022 and 2023.

Yorkshire and the Humber saw a significant rise in insolvency activity in February, UK.News.Yahoo.com reported. Research from the UK's insolvency trade body, R3, indicates a 39 per cent increase. Despite this, new business start-ups in the region rose by 0.2 per cent, the only increase in England.

Euro-area inflation slowed more than initially reported in February, strengthening arguments for the European Central Bank to keep cutting interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices rose an annual 2.3% — less than the 2.4% Eurostat first flagged. Wednesday’s revision follows an unexpected drop in Germany’s inflation rate. With the outlook for economic expansion and inflation in Europe clouded by uncertainty, ECB officials debating whether to pause or lower borrowing costs again next month may be tempted to focus on the clear progress in reaching their 2% target.

Ireland’s economy would suffer a significant blow and could even risk recession if U.S. President Trump targeted the country with higher tariffs or changed tax rules, the Central Bank of Ireland said Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported. In a quarterly report, the central bank lowered its growth forecasts for this year and next, citing the impact of uncertainty about Trump’s future actions on investment and exports. It now expects gross domestic product to grow by 4% in both 2025 and 2026, having previously forecast an expansion of 4.2% this year and 4.5% next.

The Bank of France reported a widening loss in 2024 after booking one-off gains the previous year and as it continues to digest rapid changes in the European Central Bank’s monetary policy in recent years, Bloomberg News reported. Like other central banks in the euro-area network, France’s is squeezed between servicing deposits at the high interest rates imposed on the economy to fight inflation and only small income flows from bonds purchased when borrowing costs were low.

Trade uncertainty is weighing on the European economy and any boost from investment in defense will take time, meaning the European Central Bank may need to keep cutting rates, rate setter Olli Rehn said, the Wall Street Journal reported. “As regards trade policy, the effect is fairly immediate because of pervasive uncertainty,” said Rehn, governor of the Finnish central bank, in a livestream hosted by MNI on Tuesday.

Weaknesses in the capital regime for the Swiss banking sector still need to be addressed after the 2023 collapse of Credit Suisse, the Swiss National Bank said on Tuesday, backing government efforts to make the industry more robust, Reuters reported. Switzerland has pledged to introduce stricter banking regulations in response to the demise of Credit Suisse, which was subsequently taken over by its old rival UBS. At the centre of proposals set out by the government last year is that UBS should hold more capital to make it more robust and prevent a repeat of the Credit Suisse meltdown.

The UK Labour government announced it would save billions of pounds a year by slashing welfare spending, unveiling controversial reforms which have provoked criticism from disability campaigners and divided Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s governing party, Bloomberg News reported. The government will toughen the criteria that sick and disabled people must meet to qualify for Personal Independence Payments (PIPs), a key benefit aimed at helping people with disabilities go about their daily lives, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall told the House of Commons on Tuesday.