Europe's slow vaccine roll-out means its economic recovery could lag behind upturns in the United States and Asia unless it can get the programme back on track in the weeks ahead.
Britain's Rolls-Royce agreed to sell its Bergen Engines unit to Russia-based TMH Group for net proceeds of 150 million euros ($180 million), making initial progress with a disposal plan aimed at helping it survive the pandemic.
Hungary may start inoculating people with Russia's Sputnik V COVID vaccine next week after it granted emergency use approval to the shot last month, the first in the European Union, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told state radio on Friday.
Zambia, which became Africa's first pandemic-era sovereign default late last year, said on Friday it had officially requested debt restructuring under a new common framework supported by the Group of 20 wealthy economies.
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LISBON, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Portugal’s BPI does not see the end of a loan repayment freeze for pandemic-hit businesses and families leading to a big jump in bad debts for the country’s banking industry.
The freeze will be lifted on around a quarter of affected loans - mostly mortgages - in March, but will continue for the rest until September.
Chief Executive Joao Oliveira e Costa told an online news conference that BPI, owned by Spain’s Caixabank, had 97,500 customer contracts benefitting from the repayment freeze in December, 11,000 less than three months earlier.
Those loans are worth 5.6 billion euros ($6.7 billion), or 22% of the bank’s total loan portfolio.