Banks are putting the brakes on U.K. commercial real estate lending as the pandemic batters the economy and stokes fears about looming defaults, Bloomberg News reported. New loans declined in the first half by 34% from a year earlier to 15.5 billion pounds ($20.2 billion), according to a report from The Business School in the City of London. More than a fifth of lenders surveyed said they made no new commercial property loans in the period. The coronavirus has plunged the U.K. into a painful recession.

Rich nations, development banks and private creditors need to ramp up support for poorer countries to prevent humanitarian crises and a “lost decade” of global growth, the prominent G30 group of former policymakers and academics said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. How to support struggling countries is the most pressing issue being discussed during the virtual annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank this week amid warnings 150 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty by the end of next year. The G30, which includes former U.S.

The Swiss government will not extend beyond next week emergency measures it imposed in April designed to prevent the coronavirus pandemic from driving otherwise healthy companies into bankruptcy, it said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The decree that suspended companies’ obligation to report overindebtedness will expire as planned on Oct. 19, it said. “The (government) is convinced that there is a need for great restraint when interfering with the economic cycle. Relief for debtors, for example a deferral, always means a burden for creditors and for the entire economy.

Forecasts for the global economy are “somewhat less dire” as rich nations and China have rebounded quicker than expected from coronavirus lockdowns, but the outlook for many emerging markets has worsened, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The IMF forecast a 2020 global contraction of 4.4% in its latest World Economic Outlook, an improvement over a 5.2% contraction predicted in June, when pandemic-related business closures reached their peak.

Global finance leaders on Tuesday said the world economy had escaped a coronavirus-triggered collapse so far, but warned that failure to conquer the pandemic, maintain stimulus and tackle mounting debt among poor nations could crush a fragile recovery, Reuters reported. At the start of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the IMF issued slightly improved growth forecasts spurred by unexpectedly stronger rebounds from coronavirus lockdowns in the wealthiest countries and China.

A restructuring plan for Portugal’s flag carrier TAP will be sent to the European Commission in November, the secretary of state for the treasury said on Tuesday, which if approved will buy the airline time to repay a huge bailout loan, Reuters reported. TAP asked for state aid in April after the outbreak of the coronavirus forced it to suspend almost all of its 2,500 weekly flights. The European Commission approved a 1.2 billion euro rescue loan in June, contingent on the airline drawing up a restructuring plan within six months, or by the middle of December.

German banks should prepare for a surge in insolvencies as the coronavirus crisis pushes weaker companies over the edge and puts a question mark on the country’s property boom, the Bundesbank said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. With part of a government moratorium on insolvencies now expired, the German central bank said corporate insolvencies could rise by more than 35% by March to more than 6,000 per quarter, a level not seen since 2013.

Businesses across Singapore have been left scrambling to process payments for everything from hotel stays to telephone bills after the city-state’s regulator shut down the payment services of fraudulent German group Wirecard, the Financial Times reported. Cafés, restaurants, hotels and mobile network providers were left with no payment processing systems after the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the de facto central bank, late last month ordered Wirecard to cease payment services in the city-state. Some banks in Singapore had advised their clients to consider switching pay

A consensus is emerging among G20 nations to extend a debt-payment freeze next week for poor countries for an additional six months, a French finance ministry source said on Friday, Reuters reported. Members of the Group of 20 economic powers and the Paris Club of creditor nations agreed in April to suspend until the end of the year debt payments owed to them by poor countries to free up resources for tackling the coronavirus outbreak. G20 finance ministers are due to take a decision on what to do after the end of the year when they hold an online meeting next Wednesday, the source said.

Spanish companies already endured one of Europe’s toughest lockdowns earlier this year as the country became one of the region’s epicentres for the virus, Reuters reported. A fresh surge in infections is compounding the hit to the economy, which is expected to shrink by more than 11% in the year as a whole. Yet fiscal aid to prop up the economy only amounted to 3.7% of GDP against 8.3% in Germany, the Brussels-based think-tank Bruegel estimates. That left small Spanish companies rushing to take up short-term loans as their only lifeline.