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.

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.