Ekati Diamond Mine Gets $115M Canadian Loan, Avoids Bankruptcy

Ekati Diamond Mine is getting a $115 million loan from the Canadian government to continue operations at the mine and protect jobs, its owner announced Thursday, CBC.ca reported. Jeremy King, CEO of Australia-based Burgundy Diamond Mines, which owns Ekati, said his company was working in the background with the government of the Northwest Territories and came close to shutting the mine down "weeks ago." "We were in a very bleak, or stark, scenario," he said. "It was either this line or we were looking at bankruptcy and shutting the mine down," he said.
United Kingdom
Australia
Read more

Michelle Mone-linked PPE Firm Liquidated and Unlikely to Repay £148m

The UK Government is unlikely to see most of the £148m it is owed by a faulty PPE supplier linked to Baroness Michelle Mone after the company was wound up, BBC.com reported. PPE Medpro, a consortium run by Mone's husband Douglas Barrowman, was placed into liquidation at the Insolvency and Companies Court on Thursday. It follows a High Court ruling in October, which found that the firm breached a contract to supply 25 million surgical gowns during the Covid pandemic. PPE Medpro filed for administration in September, a day before the order to pay.
United Kingdom
Read more

Alecta Off Hook over US Bank Losses After Watchdog Drops Probe

Sweden’s financial watchdog has closed its long-running investigation into Alecta’s loss-making investments into three US niche banks, which tipped the pension fund into crisis in 2023, saying it found no breach of the rules, IPE.com reported. The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen, FI) announced this morning: “The investigation has not shown any violations of the rules in the risk management system Alecta has had for assessing investment risks.
Sweden
United States
Read more

EU Commits to $105 Billion Loan to Ukraine—but Without Russian Assets

European leaders committed to lend Ukraine 90 billion euros, equivalent to around $105 billion, to help the country keep fighting Moscow’s invasion but failed to agree on a plan to use frozen Russian assets for the loan, the Wall Street Journal reported. The vow to loan Ukraine money amounts to a financial lifeline at a crucial moment, but the European Union’s inability to agree on handing Kyiv tens of billions of dollars in Russian funds underlines divisions in the bloc over the extent to which they are prepared to confront Russia.
European Union
Ukraine
Russia
Read more

Famed Instrument Maker Höfner Reportedly Files for Bankruptcy

Höfner, the German instrument maker whose iconic Violin Bass was famously played by Paul McCartney, has reportedly filed for bankruptcy, Guitar World reported. The news comes from No Treble, which cites court documents from the Fürth District Court in Bavaria in its report. The filing states that “preliminary insolvency proceedings will be ordered on December 10, 2025, at 5:05pm” to safeguard the debtor’s assets from “adverse changes”. Dr.
Germany
Read more