The world’s poorest countries could soon be facing a tough decision -- double up on debt relief from the G20 with the caveat they must default on private creditors, or quit the programme to try to keep financial markets on side, Reuters reported. Rich countries on Friday backed an extension of the G20's Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), approved in April to help developing nations survive the coronavirus pandemic and which has seen 43 of a potential 73 eligible countries here defer $5 billion in 'official sector' debt payments.

Businesses have been granted more time to pay outstanding tax bills to Revenue at a discounted rate of interest, The Irish Times reported. The decision comes as a spokeswoman for the tax office said there had been strong demand for the incentivised repayment programme, with €46 million of outstanding business taxes now covered by it. A measure in the July stimulus package allowed companies to warehouse Covid tax debt, deferring payment until their businesses reopened and then availing of reduced interest rates.

Singapore’s central bank on Wednesday directed embattled German payments firm Wirecard to cease providing services in the city state and return all customers’ funds, Reuters reported. Wirecard, which primarily processes payments for merchants and helps companies to issue pre-paid cards in Singapore, filed for insolvency in June after a 1.9 billion euro (1.8 billion pounds) hole was discovered in its books. Singapore police are among a number of global authorities investigating Germany’s biggest post-war corporate fraud.

Fashion retailer New Look’s application for examinership in Ireland is “not about saving jobs” but an attempt to rewrite its contracts with landlords, it has been claimed, The Irish Times reported. A lawyer for some of the landlords told the High Court the company was in “more robust health than most”, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, and was seeking to make changes that could save it around €5 million per year in rent reductions.

Andrew Bailey issued a clarification of the Bank of England’s stance on negative interest rates on Tuesday, saying the central bank had not yet reached a judgment whether or when to set rates below zero for the first time, the Financial Times reported. The governor’s online speech to the University of Belfast was the latest in a series comments from BoE policymakers over the past two weeks, which have served to confuse, rather than clarify, the bank’s intentions on negative rates.

Italy’s UniCredit SpA has sued Hin Leong Trading Pte Ltd over a letter of credit, court documents show, one of several the Singapore oil trader sought from lenders for oil purchases but used to pay debt instead, Reuters reported. The Singapore High Court documents seen by Reuters show the Italian bank has also sued commodity trading giant Glencore over the matter. A source familiar with the case confirmed the lawsuits had been filed.

In a related story, the Financial Times reported that German police raided the headquarters of state-owned lender KfW this month as part of a criminal investigation into employees who approved an unsecured €100m loan to the collapsed payments group Wirecard. A spokesperson for KfW confirmed the raid, which happened two weeks ago, and said that the bank was co-operating with the investigation by Frankfurt prosecutors. Wirecard’s own headquarters on the outskirts of Munich were raided by police on Tuesday as part of the same investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.

EY was warned in 2016 by one of its own employees that senior managers at Wirecard may have committed fraud and one had attempted to bribe an auditor, The Irish Times reported. The revelation that an EY employee identified suspicious activity at Wirecard four years before the payments group imploded in Germany’s largest postwar corporate fraud will increase the pressure on the accounting firm, which audited Wirecard for more than a decade and provided unqualified audits until 2018.

IWG is preparing to set Regus into insolvency if landlords do not lower their rents. Like many other shared office operators, IWG takes out long-term leases then sublets them to companies on short-term leases, Allwork.Space reported. The company also operates through several smaller subsidiaries that are responsible for their leases, which gives IWG the ability to place them into administration to walk away from their lease commitments.

The eurozone is expected to remain in deflation over the coming months, partly because of the recent appreciation of the euro, European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde has warned, the Financial Times reported. Headline annual inflation is “expected to remain negative over the coming months” after slipping into deflation in August for the first time in four years, Ms Lagarde told the European Parliament’s committee on economic and monetary affairs on Monday.