The Polish government’s decision to reduce energy prices only until next September has “complicated” the outlook for inflation and effectively delayed the timing of interest rate cuts, according to the central bank, Bloomberg News reported. The country’s Monetary Policy Council will likely delay discussions over rate reductions until at least October, which could push back cuts into 2026, Governor Adam Glapinski said on Thursday. The MPC kept its benchmark unchanged at 5.75% during this week’s meeting.

Investors gave a lukewarm response to Thames Water’s equity raise, with several potential bidders ruling themselves out of the process, and the viability of one offer in doubt, Bloomberg News reported. CK Infrastructure Holdings — one of the firms tipped to invest — decided against placing a preliminary bid, according to people familiar with the matter. Thames set a deadline of Thursday for indicative bids. Carlyle Group Inc.

Retail trade in the eurozone fell in October for the first time since June, a sign of jitters among consumers despite accelerating wages and the economy expanding more than expected, the Wall Street Journal reported. The euro area’s volume of retail trade declined 0.5% on month in October, reversing the 0.5% rise of September, statistics agency Eurostat said Thursday. Retailers could continue to struggle in the months ahead, after the eurozone’s key consumer-confidence gauge edged down in November, having already been subdued since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

German manufacturing orders fell in October on lower automotive orders, continuing the trend of weak signals for the country’s troubled industrial sector, the Wall Street Journal reported. Factory orders slipped 1.5% on month in October, according to data published Thursday by Germany’s statistics agency Destatis. This was slightly less weak than economists’ expectations for a 2.0% decline, according to a Wall Street Journal poll. Orders for the motor industry dropped 3.7%, amid concerns about the health of the sector.

The Irish economy grew faster than previously estimated in the third quarter on the back of a rebound in multinational exports, according to official data, the Irish Times reported. GDP (gross domestic product) increased by 3.5 per cent between July and September, revised up from previous estimate increase of 2 per cent, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said on Thursday.

Northvolt has held talks with a big industrial company on selling the business that makes electric battery packs for heavy industry, as a lack of funds forces it to try to divest one of its few profitable operations by the year-end, an internal memo shows, Reuters reported. The rush to sell is the Swedish company's latest effort to strengthen its finances and shrink the business to focus on battery cell production, rather than being an all-in-one-shop for making and recycling electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Last month, Europe's biggest hope for an EV battery champion filed for U.S.

Insolvent tycoon Rene Benko remains free to defend himself against multiple international criminal investigations after Austrian authorities said they couldn’t comply with an Italian arrest warrant, Bloomberg News reported. Austrian officials had questioned the founder of the Signa retail and property conglomerate, and released him under investigation, a spokesman for the Innsbruck prosecutors said by email. With several parallel investigations, Austrian authorities cannot comply with a European arrest warrant, he said, adding that Benko wasn’t required to post bail.

Mastercard has reached an agreement in principle to settle a collective London lawsuit brought on behalf of British consumers over card fees, it said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The global payments processor was facing a lawsuit brought by consumer champion Walter Merricks on behalf of approximately 46 million adults in the United Kingdom. The case became the first mass consumer action to be approved in the UK in 2021 after a nearly five-year journey from the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to the UK Supreme Court and back.

Business activity across the euro zone fell sharply last month as the bloc's dominant services sector joined the manufacturing sector in contracting, according to a survey which showed a broadbased decline, Reuters reported. HCOB's final composite Purchasing Managers' Index for the currency union, compiled by S&P Global and seen as a good gauge of overall economic health, sank to 48.3 in November from October's 50.0. That was slightly ahead of a 48.1 preliminary estimate but still firmly below the 50 mark separating growth from contraction.