Headlines

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.

Argentina’s central bank said on Monday that it would allow the peso to move more freely, responding to investors who have demanded President Javier Milei’s government correct an overvalued currency, the Wall Street Journal reported. Milei’s administration now lets the peso sell freely within a band with upper and lower limits, rather than allowing it to float as the U.S. and other countries permit with their currencies. Beginning next year, the new policy will allow the band to expand at the rate of monthly inflation, which was 2.5% in November, the central bank said.

Shinsei Trust and Banking is set to issue a yen-based stablecoin next year, in the hopes that it will achieve widespread adoption as a global settlement currency domestically and internationally. With introduction set for the April to June quarter, it's likely to be Japan's first bank-backed stablecoin, the Japan Times reported. "The transition to a 'token economy,' where all real-world assets are tokenized and tokens permeate society as a means of settlement, is now an irreversible societal trend,” SBI Holdings President Yoshitaka Kitao said in a statement on Tuesday.

Annual global insured losses from natural catastrophes are expected to hit $107 billion in 2025, driven by the Los Angeles wildfires and severe convective storms in parts of the United States, a Swiss Re Institute study showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The U.S. stood as the most affected market in 2025, accounting for 83% of the global insured losses. Insured losses from natural catastrophes topped $100 billion in 2025 for the sixth straight year, according to the report, shifting focus back on tighter underwriting, higher premiums and fresh scrutiny of risk models.

Weakening profit margins at private credit borrowers globally will likely lead to further loan defaults in 2026, credit rating agency Morningstar DBRS said on Tuesday, as it reaffirmed its negative outlook for the fast-growing sector, Reuters reported. The roughly $3 trillion private credit market - mostly made up of loans to companies by non-banks like asset managers - has attracted scrutiny after a few high-profile U.S. bankruptcies earlier this year raised investor concerns about broader credit quality.

Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane on Friday approved Azul’s ‍debt restructuring, allowing the Brazilian airline to cut more than $2 billion in debt and raise capital through a new equity rights ‌offering and investment from ‌American Airlines and United Airlines, Reuters reported. Azul filed for chapter 11 protection ‍in New York ​in May, aiming to ​cut its debt and make ‍its business more resilient to market challenges like fluctuations in fuel prices and currency exchange rates.