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German retail sales fell more-than-expected in October, data showed on Thursday, as inflation had consumers holding back on non-essential purchases at the start of the fourth quarter, Reuters reported. Retail sales were down 2.8% on the month in October. Compared with October 2021, retail sales were down 5.0%. Germany's HDE retail association is forecasting the strongest slump in Christmas sales since 2007, with retail sales in the crucial November-December period seen dropping by 4% year-on-year on a price-adjusted basis.

European Union states are starting to coalesce around a plan to cap the price of Russian crude oil at $60 a barrel, their latest attempt to clinch an agreement before a Monday deadline, Bloomberg News reported. The bloc is also looking at a mechanism that would allow for regular evaluations and potential revisions of the price every two months from mid-January 2023, the people added. Two of the people said that there should be an agreement that any future resetting of the cap should leave it at least 5% below average market rates. They didn’t go into detail.

German energy company Uniper said Wednesday it’s suing Gazprom for damages over natural gas that hasn’t been delivered since June, when the Russian supplier started reducing amounts to Germany, the Associated Press reported. Gas importer Uniper said that it has initiated proceedings against Gazprom Export at an international arbitration tribunal in Stockholm. It said the cost to replace gas that Russia failed to supply so far totals at least 11.6 billion euros ($12 billion) and that cost will continue to increase until the end of 2024.

Saudi Arabia’s central bank has stepped up the use of a mechanism to pump money into the financial system as it looks to tackle a liquidity crunch that has helped push borrowing costs for lenders to the highest in decades, Bloomberg News reported. The latest intervention is relying on open market operations, the people said, transactions that allow the central bank to provide or drain short-term liquidity in exchange for securities from lenders. Unusually for a period of high oil prices, Saudi banks are facing a shortage of liquidity.

Brazil's economic growth slowed more than expected in the third quarter as higher interest rates affected household spending, underscoring challenges facing President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva next year, Reuters reported. Gross domestic product rose 0.4% in the three months to September, government statistics agency IBGE said on Thursday, below the 0.7% growth forecast by economists polled by Reuters. Brazil's central bank have raised borrowing costs to a nearly six-year high to battle double-digit inflation this year, which has begun to weigh on domestic demand.

The Japanese subsidiary of Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto empire FTX has put together a draft plan for clients to withdraw funds, in what would be one of the rare cases of investors getting money back from the collapsed exchange, Bloomberg News reported. The proposal, which has yet to be finalized, centers on using a platform called Liquid to facilitate the return of assets starting in January. Bankman-Fried’s sprawling tangle of FTX group companies slid into a chaotic bankruptcy on Nov.

The annual rate of inflation in the eurozone fell in November for the first time since mid-2021 as energy prices dropped, the Wall Street Journal reported. However, the slowdown isn’t likely to stop the European Central Bank from increasing interest rates further, economists warned. Consumer-price inflation across the 19 countries that share the euro has increased since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Kremlin’s decision to weaponize the country’s vast stores of energy to undermine European support for Kyiv.

Out-of-court settlements in cases of loan default are gaining traction among both creditors and debtors as parties are looking for ways to avoid initiation of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), the Economic Times of India reported. According to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI), 23,417 applications for initiation of the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP), having underlying default of ₹7.31 lakh crore, were resolved even before their admission, as on September 31.

Bitcoin is being artificially propped up and should not be legitimised by regulators or financial companies as it heads for "irrelevance", the European Central Bank said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been variously presented as an alternative form of money and a shield from the inflationary policies pursued by major central banks such as the ECB in recent years.

Argentina’s central bank expects to keep its key interest rate unchanged at 75% until at least early next year as internal indicators show that monthly inflation is cooling, Bloomberg News reported. The central bank board is seeing slower monthly price gains in November and is preparing to hold its key rate if that forecast is confirmed, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. The estimates the central bank tracks suggest monthly inflation could slow to about 5.5% in November, down from 6.3% in October.