Britain on Thursday told its antitrust regulator to get behind its push for economic growth and minimise uncertainty for businesses by making more timely, transparent and responsive interventions in merger control, digital markets and consumer protection, Reuters reported. Since taking power last year, the Labour government has stepped up pressure on the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and other regulators, demanding they play their part in tearing down barriers that hold back growth. The CMA is independent but it follows a "strategic steer" set by the secretary of state for business.

The European Union wants a trade deal with the U.S. that sees a larger reduction in tariffs than negotiations with the U.K. and China have so far yielded, officials from the bloc said Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported. President Trump imposed a series of tariffs that affect Europe’s makers of automobiles, steel and aluminum. On April 2, he announced a sharp rise in tariffs on all imports from Europe, but a week later reduced the increase to 10% for 90 days to allow for negotiations. Last week, the U.S. and the U.K.

A UK division of Sanjeev Gupta’s steel empire faces insolvency, after its parent withdrew a restructuring plan that was fiercely rejected by creditors, Bloomberg Law reported. Speciality Steel UK Ltd., an operator of plants in northern England, was unable to get creditors to agree to a plan to reduce its liabilities within an acceptable time frame ahead of a London court hearing on May 15, GFG Alliance said in a statement. The bulk of the business’s creditors relate to funding provided to Gupta’s GFG Alliance by Greensill Capital before it collapsed in 2021.

There was a 28% increase in the number of court approved Personal Insolvency Arrangements (PIAs) — the insolvency mechanism that address mortgage-related debt — during 2024, as the number of accounts in mortgage arrears “remains stubbornly high”, a new report by the Insolvency Service of Ireland has found, the Irish Examiner reported. The latest annual report from the ISI said there were 1,189 approved insolvency arrangements during 2024, of which 861 were PIAs — an increase from the 929 recorded in 2023, of which 671 were PIAs.

The eurozone economy grew less rapidly than first estimated at the start of the year, despite a boost to factory output as American firms raced to stock up on imports ahead of the imposition of trade tariffs, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product was 0.3% higher across the 20 members of the eurozone in the quarter through March, according to figures released Thursday by EU statistics agency Eurostat. In a previous estimate, GDP was calculated to have grown 0.4%.

The European Central Bank hopes to have all the political decisions in place by early next year to issue a digital euro and would then need two to three years to launch the currency, ECB board member Piero Cipollone said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The ECB has been working on a digital version of the euro for years but progress has been slower than expected, mostly because legislation is still not in place to allow the bank to proceed. Financial upheaval in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election as the U.S. President has increased the urgency, however, as Europe relies on big U.S.

The Russian economy is in an increasingly precarious state as a result of a shift to a war mode and of Western sanctions over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, a report by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The report, prepared for talks of European Union finance ministers, said that while still relatively stable, the Russian economy was only superficially resilient and that underlying imbalances and structural weaknesses were growing.