Europe’s retail crisis deepened as companies in the U.K. and Germany are set to cut thousands of jobs as online shopping accelerates the erosion of sales from traditional bricks-and-mortar stores, Bloomberg News reported. Tesco, the biggest U.K. grocer, will eliminate about 15,000 positions and close meat, fish and delicatessen counters, the Mail on Sunday reported, citing unidentified industry sources.

Metro Bank has disclosed that it failed to have enough capital backing some commercial loans because of an accounting error, sending shares in the upstart challenger to Britain’s big high-street lenders to their worst one-day loss, The Irish Times reported. The bank, which has expanded rapidly to 66 UK branches since launching in 2010, also issued a profit warning, saying its full-year profits and capital levels would be weaker than expected after a “soft” end to the year. Metro Bank’s shares were down nearly 40 per cent in late trading.

It’s said that British politicians care only about one subject right now, but besides Brexit there’s at least one other mess that needs sorting out quickly: The poor quality of company audits. While this may sound like a dry topic, it has ugly real-world implications, a Bloomberg View reported. Just look at the collapse this week of cake chain Patisserie Valerie’s owner after an accounting scandal, an event that puts as many as 2,800 jobs at risk.

British Airways parent IAG SA abandoned an eight-month pursuit of Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA, leaving the indebted discount airline reeling as it faces a cash crunch during the slow winter season, Bloomberg News reported. IAG “does not intend” to make a further bid and will be selling a 3.9 percent stake in due course, it said Thursday. Norwegian slumped as much as 26 percent, the most ever, while IAG reversed earlier declines to trade higher. Bjorn Kjos, the Scandinavian carrier’s chief executive officer, previously rejected two offers from London-based IAG as undervaluing the business.

Bank of England Deputy Governor Ben Broadbent said on Wednesday he was puzzled by widespread warnings that household debt in Britain had reached unsustainable levels, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Growth in household debt, rather than levels, had proven to be a better indicator of financial distress across different countries, Broadbent said in a speech to the London Business School. Excluding car and student loans, unsecured household debt in Britain is no higher than it was 25 years ago, relative to income, Broadbent said.

Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways on Wednesday said it has begun legal proceedings in London, disputing a claim by the administrators of Air Berlin for damages of up to 2 billion euros ($2.26 billion), Reuters reported. State-owned Etihad filed its case in the High Court in London on Wednesday, a company spokesman told Reuters, and believes that the case initiated in December by the German airline in Berlin should be determined by the English court. The insolvency administrator’s lawsuit said that Etihad had not complied with its financial obligations to Air Berlin.

British cafe chain owner Patisserie Holdings Plc on Tuesday appointed audit firm KPMG as administrators after it was unable to renew its bank facilities in the aftermath of an accounting scandal, Reuters reported. The troubled company said it did not have sufficient funding and that its Chairman Luke Johnson extended an unsecured, interest-free loan to ensure that the staff was paid wages for January. Patisserie, which floated four years ago, plunged into turmoil last October after discovering accounting irregularities that led to the suspension of its top management.

A Scottish shopping centre owned by a global asset manager is up for auction with a starting price of £1, in the latest sign of the downturn in the retail property market, the Financial Times reported. The Postings centre in Kirkcaldy, owned by a pension fund run by Columbia Threadneedle Investments, is being auctioned through Allsop with a reserve price of £1 — implying a gross initial yield of 15.6m per cent, according to the auctioneer’s website. The sale comes as a crisis on the high street begins to eat into retail property values.

Some of the UK’s biggest listed landlords face rent cuts as Debenhams seeks to ease the burden of a store portfolio that includes leases stretching as far as 2083, the Financial Times reported. British Land and Intu have the largest exposure to the struggling retailer, according to data from Colliers International, although people close to both companies insisted their stores were among Debenhams’ most successful. Other groups with significant exposure include Landsec, Capital & Regional and Hammerson, the data shows.

Shareholders in the company that owns Patisserie Valerie are increasingly concerned that the café chain could be sold cheaply or even put into administration after it warned that its accounting problems ran deeper than initially thought, the Financial Times reported. Patisserie Holdings is in urgent talks with its lenders HSBC and Barclays to extend a financing agreement beyond its scheduled expiry on Friday and has retained KPMG to “review all options available” to recover and preserve value.