"I would look at the silver rally the same way as I would the GameStop saga ... for now its not an immediate concern, but if we see sharp moves, we could see some deleveraging in markets."

Those were the words of Antoine Bouvet, a strategist at ING, about the rapid swing in the silver price recorded in recent days. Traditionally seen as the poor relation to gold, silver is now enjoying its strongest bull run in years, thanks to support from the activist shareholders taking on Wall Street. 

These online groups, that last week caused a huge upwards swing in the price of some entertainment stocks, are now turning their attention to commodities. But there are signs the trading platforms they operate from are becoming alarmed at the wild swings in prices, with more acting to curb the activities of these have-a-go brokers. 

The future of iconic UK main street stores Topshop and Miss Selfridge will be as a clicks-not-bricks experience, as their $400 million sale to Asos is confirmed.

Tesla boss Elon Musk has intervened in the ongoing dispute about the global shortage of electric car parts. Not for the first time, he is calling for suppliers to increase the number of electric batteries on the market.   

And finally, more grim data from the eurozone about the level of business bankruptcies across the bloc last year, with warnings that the failure rate is likely to get worse before it gets better. 

Read on for more of the day's business news.

Louise Greenwood

Digital business correspondent 

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Silver prices have broken above $30 an ounce for the first time since 2013, as the activist shareholder groups behind the recent surge in the GameStop share price turn their attention to what they believe is a mis-sold commodities market. 

Mass buying by online amateur traders has pushed up stock in both hard metals and in several smaller Australian mining firms that supply them. Argent Minerals jumped 60 percent, while rival Investigator Resources was up 47 percent. Trading groups on sites such as Reddit maintain the silver price, like many unfashionable pandemic-hit stocks, is being unfairly manipulated by a some Wall Street banks.

One of the UK's biggest financial online trading platforms blocked new trades in the retailer GameStop and cinema chain AMC from early on Monday. Blaming "recent extreme volatility" in prices, IG says existing investments will be honored but added that the decision will be "reviewed regularly."

One U.S. hedge fund betting against the value of GameStop through short-selling contracts has lost close to $7 billion over recent weeks. Melvin Capital is reported to have taken a bailout loan of $2.75 billion from backers before closing its position on GameStop entirely, with the fund's assets having fallen from around $12.5 billion at the start of the year to around $8 billion now. 

Social media company Reddit was experiencing service problems on Saturday, according to outage monitors. Customers on the U.S. East Coast and in Toronto reported problems logging on. In a statement, Reddit said: "Issues with higher error rates this week … meant slower load times for some users." Members of activist shareholder groups using Reddit, like Wallstreetbets, are now estimated to number around 6 million.

Online fashion retailer Asos has bought the Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge brands from failed bricks-and-mortar retailer Arcadia for an estimated $400 million. The group, owned by flamboyant mogul Philip Green, called in the administrators last November, putting 13,000 jobs at risk. While Asos will acquire the stock and the brands, the group's physical store infrastructure is not included as part of the deal.

The boss of Europe's biggest low-cost airline is forecasting "a strong return" for beach holidays as the vaccine roll-out continues. But Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair, also warns the carrier faces record losses of anything up to $1.2 billion for the financial year to March, with customer numbers down around 75 percent.   

Strong demand is reported for shares in the short video app company Kuaishou Technology before it lists in Hong Kong later this week. The flotation of Kuaishou, which aims to raise $5.4 billion, has been described as possibly the biggest since Uber's $8.1 billion U.S. market debut in May 2019. Kuaishou, which means "fast hand", operates China's most popular video service after ByteDance. 

Tesla boss Elon Musk has again called for an increase in the worldwide production of battery cells. Speaking on the exclusive social media site Clubhouse, Musk said: "It's important to emphasize to our suppliers, we're not trying to put them out of business, we want them to increase their rate." The Tesla CEO has previously hinted that the electric car maker may consider producing its own battery cells if enough cannot be sourced on the open market to meet production demands.  

EU regulators will decide within the next month whether to clear Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition of the gaming giant ZeniMax Media. Microsoft, which sees the acquisition as necessary to help it compete with Sony's flagship PlayStation, filed for the European Commission's approval for the deal last week. ZeniMax, which owns Bethesda Softworks, has developed a number of gaming hits including Fallout and Doom.

Meanwhile, EU antitrust regulators, seeking what its claimed are unpaid taxes by Apple, say legal errors were made when a court scrapped an order for the tech giant to pay $15 billion in Irish back taxes. European Commission-based watchdogs are appealing to Luxembourg's Court of Justice to overturn the ruling, after the EU's General Court initially found last year there was not enough evidence to show Apple had broken EU competition rules.

HSBC says it is to set up a new private banking business in Thailand, its second onshore expansion in Southeast Asia. The operation will cover client management and advisory services to cater to Asia's booming class of new rich.

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The World Health Organization is warning that "vaccine nationalism" will extend the coronavirus pandemic and has called for the free movement of jabs around the world. It comes as Europe reversed a plan to use emergency Brexit measures to restrict drug exports to the UK. CGTN Europe was joined by David Taylor, emeritus professor of pharmaceutical and public health policy at University College London, to discuss the issue.

I'm not sure it's terribly helpful. If we take it to mean people behaving selfishly, not talking to others, not communicating, not caring ... remember, this is all terribly new, they're only just being licensed, supply chains are being set up, then it's not surprising there are teething problems. If we're trying to get the oldest, the most vulnerable served first, then we need to work across boundaries reasonably and respect one another, understand that things will go wrong. Vaccine production is difficult. But once it's scaled up and established, then within a year or two, we will have the capacity to supply the whole world. 

The dispute, first of all, was between AstraZeneca and the EU about contracts then supplies and now borders, do you see a way out of these kind of tensions? 

I think the European Commission took on a purchasing role, which it wasn't necessarily well-equipped to do. It's not surprising, because this is a unique once-in-a-lifetime situation. They discovered that there would be a supply problem. The details of the contracts, I don't know, but it seems to me that when people say they make their best efforts, they've got to also be respecting the deals they've already made. And the Commission was relatively late in signing its contracts. They then fear a political situation, member states becoming angry with them. To some extent, I think we've seen a political reaction, an attempt to perhaps scapegoat pharmaceutical companies, which happens all the time, they're relatively easy to blame if things go wrong. 

What about the supply of vaccines being sped up across Europe to solve these kind of problems? 

I respect very much some people in the European Commission who are saying 'let's work constructively as we can'. The important thing to say is that the Chinese science, American science, British science etc... have helped to develop these vaccines and let us work together as constructively as possible to get them out.

And finally, the latest figures on EU business start-up and failure rates during the slight easing of lockdown conditions late last year have been revealed. Although the start-up rate rebounded slightly, this was dwarfed by the number of firms calling in the liquidators, rising to over 83 percent in fledgling Estonia, a figure analysts say is likely to get worse across all member states before the pandemic ends.