Europe

The European Central Bank is open to considering an interest-rate cut in October if the economy suffers a major setback — though the next comprehensive set of information will only be available at the following meeting, President Christine Lagarde said, Bloomberg News reported. Her remarks, less than a day after the ECB delivered its second quarter-point reduction in the deposit rate since June, offer the clearest signal yet that policymakers are leaning toward waiting until December for their next move.

Eurozone factories failed to produce more goods for a fourth straight month as the sector struggles to turn around a prolonged downturn led by its most important member, Germany, the Wall Street Journal reported. Industrial output was 0.3% lower in July than in June, according to figures set out Friday by the EU statistics authority. In June, output was flat, a slightly better result than the decrease previously estimated, but the currency union has still gone since March without booking any rise in its factory production.

Russia's central bank hiked interest rates to their highest since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine more than 2 1/2 years ago, a step aimed at combatting the inflation fuelled by massive government outlays for the military — and by robust spending from Russian consumers in shops, the Associated Press reported. The bank raised its key rate to 19%, just below the level from late February 2022. Then the policy rate reached an unprecedented 20% in a desperate bid by the bank to shore up the ruble and ward off a financial collapse amid sanctions imposed by Western governments.

The U.K. government has introduced a new bill to Parliament that proposes new legal protections for digital assets such as cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and carbon credits, TechCrunch.com reported. The bill comes as the crypto sector contends with a range of regulatory headwinds: In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has ruled that certain crypto assets are securities, and earlier this year, the SEC approved the first U.S.-listed exchange traded fund (ETF) to track Bitcoin.

The European Central Bank cut interest rates again on Thursday as inflation slows and economic growth falters, but provided almost no clues about its next step, even as investors bet on steady policy easing in the months ahead, Reuters reported. The ECB cut its deposit rate by 25 basis points (bps) to 3.50%, as expected, following a similar cut in June, as inflation is now within striking distance of its 2% target and the domestic economy skirts a recession. Read more.

Several European Union nations intend to challenge International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva about the Washington-based lender’s plan to engage with Russia on economic issues for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg News reported. At a meeting of EU envoys Wednesday, France, Belgium and Poland, as well as several Baltic and Nordic nations, said they were surprised by the IMF’s decision earlier this month to restart annual economic reviews with Moscow.

Germany saw a 10.7% increase in insolvencies in August compared to a year earlier, the federal statistics office reported on Wednesday, adding to data that show persistent difficulties for companies in Europe's largest economy, Reuters reported. The growth rate in insolvencies has been in double-digit territory since June 2023, with the exception of June 2024, when the year-on-year increase eased briefly to 6.3%, the office said. In the first half of 2024, German courts reported 10,702 corporate insolvencies, up 24.9% year on year, according to final data.

Britain's shift towards a services-dominated economy is accelerating, pushing manufacturing's share of economic output to a historic low and setting the nation apart from its global peers, Reuters reported. Recent data show the make-up of the world's sixth-biggest economy is changing fast, driven by global trends but also domestic factors such as Brexit and increasingly London-centric growth.

Hosting the Olympic Games gave a boost to France's service sector in August but the country's political crisis still clouds the economic outlook, the central bank said on Tuesday in its monthly business survey, Reuters reported. The euro zone's second-biggest economy is on course for underlying growth of 0.1-0.2% in the third quarter from the previous month, the Bank of France said, leaving its estimate unchanged. The Olympics could add another quarter percentage point of growth as the Games increased activity in hospitality, event management and security, particularly in the Paris region.

Europe must increase public investment by nearly $900 billion a year in sectors like technology and defense, according to a long-awaited report published Monday in response to growing anxieties about the continental economy’s lagging behind that of the United States and China, the New York Times reported. The challenge for the European Union is “existential,” Mario Draghi, a former president of the European Central Bank, said on Monday in Brussels.