A council has terminated two multi-million pound government-funded regeneration projects after an audit of one highlighted concerns over governance and finances, BBC.com reported. Somerset Council ended the Life Factory and Glastonbury Food and Regenerative Farming Centre projects, both Glastonbury Town Deal schemes, in November. In a new report, the authority says it is seeking repayment of more than £2.4m in grant funding from Red Brick Building Centre Ltd, a community benefit society (CBS) that was the grant recipient of both projects.

U.K. joblessness climbed in the three months through October as signs of a softening labor market gathered pace, raising expectations that the Bank of England will cut its benchmark interest rate at its final meeting of the year this week, the Wall Street Journal reported. The headline rate of unemployment crept up to 5.1% in August-October, from 5.0% in the three months through September, Britain’s Office for National Statistics said Tuesday. The BOE’s rate-setting committee is split.

The U.K.’s Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal in a long-running $13 billion lawsuit brought by Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) investors, supporting lower-court rulings that narrowed claims against major crypto exchanges over the token’s delisting, CoinDesk.com reported. In a brief decision released on Dec. 8, the court said BSV Claims Limited's “application does not raise an arguable point of law or a point of law of general public importance”.

Millions of Britons will be allowed to dabble in a risky form of cryptocurrency trading under fresh plans from the City watchdog to regulate digital assets, The Telegraph reported. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on Tuesday said that retail investors will be permitted to access crypto borrowing services, where individuals trade assets such as Bitcoin that they have borrowed but do not actually own. Read more.

Greece completed an early repayment of €5.3bn in loans from its first eurozone bailout programme this week, EuroNews.com reported. The settlement of the debt, originally scheduled to mature after 2031 or even into the 2040s, marks a positive step in Greece’s decades-long effort to stabilise its public finances. Coordinated by the European Commission, the payment is a strong indication that the country is relying less on crisis-era debt and lowering the burden of future interest payments.

German insurers are the most exposed in Europe to illiquid corporate bonds, a top watchdog said in one of the most detailed reports to date on the industry’s investments in private credit. At €91.8 billion ($108 billion), more than 40% of German insurers’ bond holdings were in unlisted notes at the end of last year, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority said on Monday in Frankfurt. Excluding index- or unit-linked investments, European insurers held about €1.2 trillion of corporate bonds, of which some 13% were illiquid or unlisted.

The U.K. economy contracted for a second straight month in October, cementing expectations that the Bank of England will lower its key interest rate later this week, the Wall Street Journal reported. Economic activity dipped 0.1% on month in October, the Office for National Statistics said Friday, after a 0.1% fall in September. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal expected a 0.1% increase. The contraction in October makes a rate cut by the BOE at its next meeting on Thursday more likely, as concerns over growth mount.

After a stellar 2025, investors expect shares in European banks to keep heading higher in 2026, supported by strong earnings and, crucially, cost savings stemming from artificial intelligence, Reuters reported. As fears of a recession and interest rate cuts from the European Central Bank have subsided, investors have turned even more positive towards European banks, revising up their expectations for the sector, despite a complicated backdrop.

Austrian former property tycoon Rene Benko will appeal against his second conviction for insolvency-related fraud, his lawyer Norbert Wess said on Friday, Reuters reported. A court in his home city of Innsbruck handed Benko a 15-month suspended prison sentence and fined him 4,320 euros ($5,100) on Wednesday for hiding two luxury watches and four pairs of cuff links from creditors by keeping them inside a safe in the basement of a relative's house. However, the prosecution had sought a conviction based on 11 watches and 120,000 euros in cash found in that safe along with the cuff links.

A fund run by life sciences venture firm Apple Tree Partners filed for bankruptcy months after alleging that its Russian billionaire backer, Dmitry Rybolovlev, hasn’t met financing commitments because of liquidity problems at his family office, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. New York-based Apple Tree Life Sciences filed for chapter 11 reorganization Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., with assets of more than $1 billion and liabilities of less than $500,000.