Europe

Embattled German battery-maker Varta AG has adjusted its restructuring plan to help win the support of a key group of lenders, paving the way for its approval, Bloomberg News reported. A “large proportion” of holders of its €250 milllion ($278 million) in promissory notes — also called Schuldschein — have expressed interest in the improved deal, the company said in a statement Tuesday. The Schuldschein lenders had originally resisted the restructuring plan and submitted a rival deal.

Lenders to Berlin-based SellerX canceled a plan to auction off the brand aggregator on Tuesday, opting instead to continue debt negotiations with shareholders of the struggling company, Bloomberg News reported. SellerX confirmed that the auction, initiated by BlackRock Inc. and Victory Park Capital Advisors LLC last month, has been canceled.

The U.K.’s annual rate of inflation was unchanged in August, despite prices of services increasing at a faster rate, reinforcing expectations that the Bank of England will leave its key interest rate unchanged Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer prices were 2.2% higher in August than the same month last year, a level of inflation that matched July’s rate, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal also expected inflation to remain at 2.2%.

The Bank of France cut its forecast for French inflation next year to well below the European Central Bank’s 2% target, adding to signals encouraging policymakers to pursue interest-rate cuts, Bloomberg News reported. The pace of annual price increases in the euro area’s second-largest economy will ease to 1.5% on average in 2025 from 2.5% in 2024, the Bank of France said in its September economic forecasts. That’s lower than the 1.7% it predicted in June, due mainly to expectations of weaker electricity prices. The Bank of France expects the rate to rise to 1.7% in 2026, it said on Tuesday.

A long-awaited plan to help Ukraine rebuild using Russian money is in limbo as the United States and Europe struggle to agree on how to construct a $50 billion loan using Russia’s frozen central bank assets while complying with their own laws, the New York Times reported. The fraught negotiations reflect the challenges facing the Group of 7 nations as they attempt to push their sanctions powers to new limits in an attempt to punish Russia and aid Ukraine. American and European officials have been scrambling in recent weeks to try to get the loan in place by the end of the year.

The European Central Bank will ease monetary policy further, though it shouldn’t do so too hastily due to lingering inflation risks, according to Governing Council member Martins Kazaks, Bloomberg News reported. “We have at the ECB Governing Council already lowered rates two times this year, and this is not the final destination,” the Latvian central-bank head said Monday. “These rates will continue to go down.” Borrowing costs remain “pretty restrictive,” Kazaks told Latvian public TV.

Harland & Wolff, the British holding company for the shipyard that built the Titanic and other 20th-century ocean liners, said on Monday that it was going into administration, similar to U.S. bankruptcy proceedings, after months of intense financial turmoil, the New York Times reported. The company said in a regulatory filing that it was insolvent and that the advisory firm Teneo would be appointed as the administrator. While Harland & Wolff will go into administration, the company’s four shipyards will continue operating, it said.

The number of bankruptcies in August decreased significantly compared to the previous month, according to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), the NL Times reported. In August, 307 companies and institutions, including one-person businesses, were declared bankrupt, down 18 percent compared to July. Despite the month-to-month improvement, roughly 40 percent more bankruptcies were declared in the first eight months of 2024 when compared to the same period last year. A total of 378 companies were declared bankrupt in July, which was 71 more than in August.

The number of personal bankruptcies in Slovakia decreased by 20 percent year-on-year (y-o-y) to 688 in August, the third lowest figure seen this year, according to an analysis published by CRIF – Slovak Credit Bureau (CRIF SK), which manages the credit registries of banking and non-banking houses, TASR.SK reported. Of the total number of bankruptcies, 428 concerned men and 260 women, confirming the long-term trend that men go bankrupt more often than women. "Men accounted for over 62 percent of personal bankruptcies in August.

H.I.G. Capital is injecting €50 million ($55 million) into Berlin-based property developer Ziegert, according to people familiar with the matter, one of the first such deals in the sector since a slump caused by a sharp rise in construction costs and drop in demand, Bloomberg News reported. Germany’s property market is reeling from the end of the cheap-money era that pushed a slew of developers into insolvency or debt restructuring. While some investors have picked up property assets out of bankruptcy, there have been few investments into healthy firms in the sector.