Builder.ai filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. after creditors seized most of the cash in the British startup’s bank accounts, Bloomberg News reported. The company published a list of creditors in a chapter 7 case in a Delaware bankruptcy court, Builder.ai said in a filing dated June 2. Read more. (Subscription required.)

A liquidator has been appointed for the bankrupt charity that ran two public leisure centres in Lincoln, BBC.com reported. Yarborough and Birchwood leisure centres closed on 3 April after Active Nation ceased trading. Stockport-based firm Beesley Corporate Recovery has been appointed to handle the charity's insolvency process. Both facilities are expected to fully reopen by mid-July after City of Lincoln Council, which owns the buildings, chose charitable social enterprise Greenwich Leisure Limited (GLL) as the interim operator for them.

Builder's merchant Blanchford Building Supplies racked up debts of more than £3.3million to suppliers before it fell into administration, YahooNews.com reported. The 75-year-old Headington-based business closed down ‘without warning’ earlier this year without giving any reason. All four of Blanchford's shops in Bicester, Wallingford, Princes Risborough and Haddenham closed on February 14. Timothy Townley and Danny Dartnaill, of business restructuring specialist BDO LLP, were appointed as joint administrators in mid-February.

The commercial court in Zagreb has scheduled a hearing for July 1 to decide on a proposal to open bankruptcy proceedings against media leasing and planning company Unex Media, SeeNews.com reported. The company has flied for bankruptcy on May 26, the court said on Wednesday. The company’s account has been blocked since February 11 and its debt as of June 4 amounts to 2.07 million euro.

The European Central Bank cut interest rates as expected on Thursday and said it believed it was now well-positioned to cope with global economic uncertainty, as market bets grew on a summer pause in its year-long easing cycle, Reuters reported. The ECB has now lowered borrowing costs eight times, or by 2 percentage points since last June, seeking to prop up a euro zone economy that was struggling even before erratic U.S. economic and trade policies dealt it further blows.

Few British businesses now expect to be directly affected by recent changes in U.S. trade policy, with only 12% naming it as one of their top three sources of uncertainty, down from 22% a month earlier, a Bank of England survey showed on Thursday, Reuters reported. U.S. President Donald Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs on imports to the United States in early April. Britain secured a partial exemption from the tariffs in early May, although the details are still to be finalised. The BoE said 70% of businesses surveyed in May as part of its monthly Decision Maker Panel expected that U.S.

German manufacturing orders unexpectedly rose in April, confounding fears that the Trump administration’s ratcheting up of tariffs would hit demand for German goods, the Wall Street Journal reported. Factory orders climbed 0.6% on month, Germany’s statistics agency Destatis said Thursday. Nevertheless, the first hard industrial data after President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement showed a slowdown from the 3.4% increase in March, which came as U.S. firms stockpiled goods from abroad in an effort to get ahead of proposed levies.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is expected to cut interest rates by a further quarter point (0.25 per cent) on Thursday as inflation continues to cool and amid a slowdown in global trade from US tariffs, the Irish Times reported. ECB chief Christine Lagarde is also expected to face questions about her tenure as head of the bloc’s central bank amid speculation she may cut her term short.

The European Commission has reprimanded Austria and Romania for breaking European Union limits on government spending — as Austria deals with the financial fall-out of months of political deadlock and Romania's long-running fiscal problems drag on, Politico reported. Under EU fiscal rules, a country's deficit — the difference between a government’s revenues and expenditures — cannot exceed 3 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Both countries went through a long period of political crisis this year. But their situations are very different.