United Kingdom

Swedish electric-vehicle battery maker Northvolt said on Friday it expects to line up additional bankruptcy financing by late January after engaging with over 100 lenders and potential investors, Reuters reported. Northvolt entered bankruptcy on Nov. 21 with a $100-million bankruptcy loan from Swedish truck maker Scania, a shareholder and its biggest customer. But that loan was not intended to carry Northvolt through its entire bankruptcy restructuring, and the company has continued to evaluate proposals for additional financing from strategic and financial investors.

The U.K. economy stagnated in the previous quarter in a blow to the government’s hopes for growth, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product flatlined between July and September, according to data set out Monday by the Office for National Statistics. The ONS had previously estimated growth of 0.1% over the third quarter. Growth in the preceding quarter was also a little lower than previously calculated, the agency said. “The economy was weaker in the second and third quarters of this year than our initial estimates suggested,” ONS statistics director Liz McKeown said.

British shoppers spent a little more as wages continue to grow, a boost to the government’s hopes of a consumption uptick at the end of the year, the Wall Street Journal reported. Total U.K. retail sales were 0.2% higher in November than in October, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. That reverses the previous month’s downturn, when consumers held off on spending ahead of the government’s budget at the end of the month, and warm, dry weather deterred buying of winter fashion.

The Bank of England kept its main interest rate unchanged at 4.75% on Thursday but policymakers became more divided about whether rate cuts were needed to tackle a slowing economy, Reuters reported. Three of the BoE's nine-person Monetary Policy Committee - Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden and external members Swati Dhingra and Alan Taylor - voted for a quarter-point rate cut to 4.5%. But BoE Governor Andrew Bailey said the central bank needed to stick to its existing "gradual approach" to cutting rates.

More insolvencies hit construction than any other sector in the year to November, according to new official figures, ConstrucitonNews.co.uk reported. The latest data from the Insolvency Service revealed that 4,208 construction firms became insolvent in the year to November 2024. It means the sector represented 17 per cent of liquidations, administrations and company voluntary arrangements across England and Wales this year.

Thames Water has won court approval to secure a £3bn cash lifeline from some of its biggest creditors, The Guardian reported. The company will need to hold a formal vote to win support from the majority of creditors in January, before its deal is rubber-stamped by the courts in February. The decision, which covers a complex debt-restructuring effort, was essential to ensure the company has enough money to stave off temporary nationalisation, Thames said.

The number of people going financially insolvent across England and Wales was 25% higher in November this year than in the same month in 2023, according to Insolvency Service figures, the Independent reported. Some 10,012 people entered insolvency in England and Wales in November 2024, which was also a 12% jump when compared with the previous month. The insolvencies were made up of 589 bankruptcies, 3,693 debt relief orders (DROs) and 5,730 individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs).

Thames Water is offering sweeteners to its most senior creditors in exchange for their support for its plan to raise £3 billion ($3.8 billion) of emergency cash, Bloomberg News reported. The beleaguered utility has modified its restructuring plan and has now offered to pay additional fees to the providers of its interest rate and index swaps, according to a statement by Thames Water on Friday. With these additional premiums the company is expecting — based on previous discussions — a sufficient majority of its derivatives counterparties to give the green light to its proposal.

A Surrey company director who fraudulently moved £100,000 in Covid-19 loans through his family's bank accounts has avoided jail, BBC.com reported. Muhammadh Chaudhry secured a £50,000 Bounce Back Loan for a media business in July 2020 and then fraudulently obtained another £50,000 loan for UK Media Kit Hire Ltd in September 2020, which he claimed was a film and TV production company. The 41-year-old then transferred the funds through savings accounts held by close relatives, the Insolvency Service said.

Britain's economy shrank for a second month in a row in October in the run-up to the government's first budget, the first back-to-back falls in output since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a setback for new finance minister Rachel Reeves, Reuters reported. Gross domestic product contracted by 0.1% month-on-month in October, as it did in September, the Office for National Statistics said. It was the first consecutive drop in monthly GDP - which is volatile and prone to revision - since March and April 2020, when Britain enforced its first coronavirus lockdown.