The High Court has granted permission to the Irish arm of fashion retailer New Look to pay a tax bill of nearly €2.7 million, as the company puts together a survival plan amid financial losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic, The Irish Times reported. Mr Justice Denis McDonald made the order after New Look said its tax affairs needed to be up to date before it could avail of the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) for workers. Monday’s hearing was in advance of an application by the company, for hearing on Tuesday, to have an examiner appointed.

More than 1,000 family-run coach businesses across the UK face being forced into bankruptcy and having their vehicles repossessed, according to their trade body, the Financial Times reported.

For the U.K.’s indebted pub companies, a new 10 p.m. curfew doesn’t just dent sales, it weighs on their debt loads too, Bloomberg News reported. Bonds issued by Stonegate, the heavily leveraged owner of the Slug & Lettuce, Walkabout and Yates’ chains, have fallen to the lowest since they were sold in July. A risk gauge on the company’s debt indicates investors see a 57% likelihood it will default in five years, according to ICE Data Services. Bonds of other large pubcos Marston’s Plc and Mitchells & Butlers Plc have also slid as investors fret.

Carmakers including Jaguar Land Rover and Nissan Motor Co. have joined with lenders to create a network to protect the industry’s supply chain from succumbing to Covid-19 and a no-deal Brexit, Bloomberg News reported. Under the so-called safe harbor plan, suppliers in financial difficulty can lean on carmakers for improved payment terms, and lenders will be called upon to step in with financial assistance, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, which is organizing the network.

Even as the European economy slumps into its deepest recession in modern history, the number of bankruptcies across the continent has fallen sharply as government subsidies and a temporary loosening of insolvency rules keep companies afloat, Reuters reported. During the first half of 2020, countries including Britain, France and Spain saw insolvencies fall by an estimated 20-40%year-on-year, official and private sector data show.

Losses at Funding Circle more than tripled in the first half of the year, as the sudden onset of the coronavirus pandemic forced the peer-to-peer lender to write down the value of loans it had hoped to sell on to other investors, the Financial Times reported. Funding Circle originates small business loans on behalf of retail investors and other financial institutions, and generally only holds a small number of loans on its own balance sheet.

Owners of clubs in rugby’s Premiership have said teams could go bust and the professional game may cease to exist if the government does not provide financial aid after its U-turn on allowing fans at stadiums amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament that, as part of new restrictions to tackle a second wave of COVID-19, the government was putting on hold plans for 25%-33% capacities from Oct. 1.

Eurozone services activity declined in September according to a widely watched business sentiment survey, fuelling economists’ concerns that a resurgence in coronavirus cases threatens the bloc’s economic recovery, the Financial Times reported. The IHS Markit flash eurozone purchasing managers’ index for services fell to 47.6 in September, from 50.5 in the previous month, data published on Wednesday showed. It was the first time in three months that the reading had dropped below the 50 mark, and the lowest level since May.

After a decade of scandals and multiple bailouts, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA is back in the spotlight, Bloomberg News reported in a commentary. This time, the Italian government is shopping around the 1.5 billion-euro ($1.7 billion) lender ahead of a European Union deadline for Rome to exit the bank next year. Loaded with legal risks that dwarf its market value, any investor will be loathe to buy Monte Paschi with those liabilities — not least in the midst of a pandemic. The risk to Italian taxpayers is that Rome offloads its majority stake in the world’s oldest bank at any cost.

Wirecard’s fabricated Asian business was not its only deception. The rest of the once-lauded German payment provider’s business was chaotic, beset by byzantine reporting lines, hobbled by lamentable IT and racking up losses, according to a report by Wirecard’s administrator and accounts of former employees, the Financial Times reported. The picture that emerges of the Wirecard businesses that did exist is a stark contrast to the one painted by former chief executive Markus Braun, who hailed the group as a highly profitable pioneer in the payments industry.