Ownership of The Daily Telegraph, the storied British newspaper long considered close to the country’s Conservative Party, is poised to change — again, the New York Times reported. RedBird Capital Partners, an American investment firm, said on Friday that it had reached an agreement in principle to buy control of the newspaper’s parent company, Telegraph Media Group, at a valuation of 500 million pounds, or about $675 million.

Swedish automotive battery maker Northvolt, which declared bankruptcy in March, plans to wind down its remaining battery cell production in the Nordic country by the end of June, its trustee said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Northvolt filed for bankruptcy in Sweden on March 12, making it one of the country's largest corporate failures and effectively ending Europe's best hope of developing a rival to challenge China.

When Builder.ai was seeking an emergency loan in 2024, the start-up gave lenders a revenue forecast that proved to be four times its actual sales, Bloomberg News reported. A group of creditors, led by Israeli firm Viola Credit, were originally told that Builder.ai projected sales of US$220 million (S$284 million) for 2024, the people said. The company later disclosed that the actual revenue amount for the year turned out to be about US$50 million. That revelation was one of the factors that ultimately led the lenders to seize most of the UK-based artificial intelligence (AI) start-up’s cash.

Wages in the eurozone rose at a much slower pace during the three months through March even as the unemployment rate remained at a record low, opening the way for further cuts to borrowing costs by the European Central Bank, the Wall Street Journal reported. The ECB on Friday said that wages set through negotiations between employers and labor unions or similar bodies were 2.38% higher in the first quarter of 2025 than a year earlier, a slowdown from the 4.12% increase recorded in the three months through December. That slowdown was sharper than expected.

U.K. retail sales jumped higher than expected last month, a result of warmer weather that helped food stores bounce back, the Wall Street Journal reported. Retail sales volumes climbed 1.2% on month in April after a 0.1% rise in March, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. It was a fourth-straight monthly increase, the first time that has happened since mid-2020 after businesses reopened following the first Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.

The German economy, Europe's biggest, grew by 0.4% in the first quarter thanks to stronger-than-expected exports and manufacturing, official data showed Friday, the Associated Press reported. The Federal Statistical Office had reported at the end of last month that the economy expanded by 0.2% in the January-March period compared with the previous quarter. The head of the office, Ruth Brandt, said that “the surprisingly good economic development seen in March” led to the revision.

The number of company insolvencies registered in Scotland saw a modest decrease in April 2025, falling by 7% compared to the same month in the previous year, with 101 cases recorded, ScottishFinancialNews.com reported. This total comprised 47 creditors’ voluntary liquidations (CVLs), 51 compulsory liquidations, and three administrations. There were no company voluntary arrangements (CVAs) or receivership appointments. Looking at the broader picture, the company insolvency rate in Scotland for the 12 months ending April 2025 stood at 51.2 per 10,000 active companies.

Newly released figures show 377 firms in the construction industry collapsed in England and Wales in March – a figure that has increased 2.5 per cent from a revised 368 in February, and a sharp 23 per cent increase from January’s 306, ConstructionWave.co.uk reported. The latest data from the Insolvency Service shows insolvencies within the sector fluctuated over the year, with its highest of 403 in the previous 12 months in April 2024. Of the 377 construction firms that went under in March, more than half (54 per cent) came from specialist subcontractors, with 203 companies folding.