A long-awaited plan to help Ukraine rebuild using Russian money is in limbo as the United States and Europe struggle to agree on how to construct a $50 billion loan using Russia’s frozen central bank assets while complying with their own laws, the New York Times reported. The fraught negotiations reflect the challenges facing the Group of 7 nations as they attempt to push their sanctions powers to new limits in an attempt to punish Russia and aid Ukraine. American and European officials have been scrambling in recent weeks to try to get the loan in place by the end of the year.

The European Central Bank will ease monetary policy further, though it shouldn’t do so too hastily due to lingering inflation risks, according to Governing Council member Martins Kazaks, Bloomberg News reported. “We have at the ECB Governing Council already lowered rates two times this year, and this is not the final destination,” the Latvian central-bank head said Monday. “These rates will continue to go down.” Borrowing costs remain “pretty restrictive,” Kazaks told Latvian public TV.

Harland & Wolff, the British holding company for the shipyard that built the Titanic and other 20th-century ocean liners, said on Monday that it was going into administration, similar to U.S. bankruptcy proceedings, after months of intense financial turmoil, the New York Times reported. The company said in a regulatory filing that it was insolvent and that the advisory firm Teneo would be appointed as the administrator. While Harland & Wolff will go into administration, the company’s four shipyards will continue operating, it said.

The number of bankruptcies in August decreased significantly compared to the previous month, according to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), the NL Times reported. In August, 307 companies and institutions, including one-person businesses, were declared bankrupt, down 18 percent compared to July. Despite the month-to-month improvement, roughly 40 percent more bankruptcies were declared in the first eight months of 2024 when compared to the same period last year. A total of 378 companies were declared bankrupt in July, which was 71 more than in August.

The number of personal bankruptcies in Slovakia decreased by 20 percent year-on-year (y-o-y) to 688 in August, the third lowest figure seen this year, according to an analysis published by CRIF – Slovak Credit Bureau (CRIF SK), which manages the credit registries of banking and non-banking houses, TASR.SK reported. Of the total number of bankruptcies, 428 concerned men and 260 women, confirming the long-term trend that men go bankrupt more often than women. "Men accounted for over 62 percent of personal bankruptcies in August.

H.I.G. Capital is injecting €50 million ($55 million) into Berlin-based property developer Ziegert, according to people familiar with the matter, one of the first such deals in the sector since a slump caused by a sharp rise in construction costs and drop in demand, Bloomberg News reported. Germany’s property market is reeling from the end of the cheap-money era that pushed a slew of developers into insolvency or debt restructuring. While some investors have picked up property assets out of bankruptcy, there have been few investments into healthy firms in the sector.

The European Central Bank is open to considering an interest-rate cut in October if the economy suffers a major setback — though the next comprehensive set of information will only be available at the following meeting, President Christine Lagarde said, Bloomberg News reported. Her remarks, less than a day after the ECB delivered its second quarter-point reduction in the deposit rate since June, offer the clearest signal yet that policymakers are leaning toward waiting until December for their next move.

Eurozone factories failed to produce more goods for a fourth straight month as the sector struggles to turn around a prolonged downturn led by its most important member, Germany, the Wall Street Journal reported. Industrial output was 0.3% lower in July than in June, according to figures set out Friday by the EU statistics authority. In June, output was flat, a slightly better result than the decrease previously estimated, but the currency union has still gone since March without booking any rise in its factory production.

Russia's central bank hiked interest rates to their highest since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine more than 2 1/2 years ago, a step aimed at combatting the inflation fuelled by massive government outlays for the military — and by robust spending from Russian consumers in shops, the Associated Press reported. The bank raised its key rate to 19%, just below the level from late February 2022. Then the policy rate reached an unprecedented 20% in a desperate bid by the bank to shore up the ruble and ward off a financial collapse amid sanctions imposed by Western governments.

The U.K. government has introduced a new bill to Parliament that proposes new legal protections for digital assets such as cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and carbon credits, TechCrunch.com reported. The bill comes as the crypto sector contends with a range of regulatory headwinds: In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has ruled that certain crypto assets are securities, and earlier this year, the SEC approved the first U.S.-listed exchange traded fund (ETF) to track Bitcoin.