Shareholders in Swedish electric car battery maker Northvolt agreed Wednesday at an extraordinary general meeting to allow the financially-strained company to continue operating and avoid liquidation, Agence France Presse reported. Northvolt filed for chapter 11 protection in the U.S. in late November to enable it to restructure its debt and reorganize its business. he battery maker said in U.S. filings that it owed $5.8 billion.

Germany is grappling with its worst wave of bankruptcies since the 2008 financial crisis, as 364 major companies declared bankruptcy in 2024, marking a dramatic 30% increase from the previous year, AL24News.com reported. The economic downturn has also led to a hiring freeze across many industries, with fewer German companies recruiting new employees. Meanwhile, the number of firms implementing job cuts is rising steadily, affecting nearly every sector.

Greg Karpovsky, the founder of Stenn Technologies who was once feted by some of the biggest players on Wall Street, had suddenly gone quiet, Bloomberg News reported. Karpovsky said little on a Dec. 4 call with his 250-odd staff as they learned that his trade-finance business — valued at almost $1 billion just two years ago — had collapsed. He dialled in remotely, having left the UK just before Stenn’s British subsidiaries went into insolvency, people familiar with the matter said. On a call a week later, when most employees were made redundant, he didn’t appear at all.

The European Central Bank should keep lowering borrowing costs at every meeting as long as the retreat in inflation matches its projections, according to Governing Council member Francois Villeroy de Galhau, Bloomberg News reported. Cuts should continue until the deposit rate — currently 3% — reaches a level that neither restricts nor stimulates the region’s 20-nation economy, the Bank of France chief said.

Eurozone retail trade inched up in November, although a slowing economy and low consumer confidence could upend a sustained revival ahead, the Wall Street Journal reported. The euro area’s retail-trade volumes rose marginally by 0.1% on month in November, the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat said Thursday. This flipped some of the 0.3% decline of October, but missed expectations of a better 0.3% increase from economists polled by The Wall Street Journal. October’s fall was the first drop since July.

German investment group Mutares SE & Co. said that its portfolio company Serneke Sverige AB has filed for bankruptcy in Sweden in the latest collapse of a builder in the biggest Nordic country, Bloomberg News reported. The filing at the Gothenburg District Court follows a “drastic financial deterioration during the second half of 2024,” according to a statement on Wednesday. The Swedish construction and real estate unit was agreed to be bought from Serneke Group AB in July last year and the transaction was completed in November.

Potential investors in Thames Water will have to submit new bids for the water utility by Feb. 10, Bloomberg News reported. The highly indebted company told bidders to take industry regulator Ofwat’s December ruling about the scope for bill increases and investor returns into account for their submissions. Thames Water has been looking to raise at least £3.3 billion ($4.1 billion) in new equity after its existing shareholders declared the business “uninvestible” and kicked off a formal bidding process.

Backpack Exchange, a crypto trading platform founded by one-time employees of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and Alameda Research businesses, has acquired the former European entity of the failed FTX exchange for $32.7 million to expand its derivatives offerings in the region, Bloomberg News reported. FTX EU was one of the business units that ended up as part of the bankruptcy after Bankman-Fried’s firm collapsed in 2022.

Euro zone households could keep saving a large portion of their income to rebuild wealth lost to high inflation, the European Central Bank argued, suggesting lacklustre consumption will continue to weigh on growth in the near term, Reuters reported. European families are sitting on an ever-growing pile of savings, confounding hopes that consumer largesse will kickstart the region's stagnant economy.