Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group has bought parts of rival DW Whelan Sports out of administration for £37m, but almost half of the 1,800 jobs at the retail and gym group will be lost, the Financial Times reported. Frasers, which owns Sports Direct, on Monday said the deal would focus on DW’s gym business — the second largest in the UK — as well as “certain stock” but that it would not buy the brand. The value of the transaction may rise by up to £6.9m depending on the number of associated lease holdings that Frasers acquires.

Travel agent STA Travel Group has gone into voluntary administration. It comes after the collapse of the travel group’s Swiss-based parent company STA Travel Holding AG, which filed for insolvency, Business Insider Australia reported. STA operates online travel agent services and 27 outlets in Australia, with Deloitte’s Jason Tracy and Timothy Norman appointed as administrators on August 21.

When European countries ordered businesses to shutter and employees to stay home as the coronavirus spread, governments took radical steps to shield workers from the prospect of mass joblessness, extending billions to businesses to keep people employed, the International New York Times reported. The layoffs are coming anyway. A tsunami of job cuts is about to hit Europe as companies prepare to carry out sweeping downsizing plans to offset a collapse in business from the outbreak.

Swissport has secured hundreds of millions of euros of financial backing from creditors, gaining a vote of confidence in its future as the travel sector is hard hit by the COVID-19 crisis, Reuters reported. The Swiss-based airport ground services firm said a comprehensive restructuring with lenders included 300 million euros ($353 million) in interim support and a 500 million euro long-term debt facility that will replace that initial backing.

Wirecard inked a deal to sell its operations in Brazil, its insolvency administrator said on Friday, the first asset of global operations to sell after the company collapsed amid an accounting scandal earlier this year, Reuters reported. An agreement in principle has also been reached to sell some operations in Britain, and the process of selling its North American operations are well advanced with a deal expected “shortly”, the administrator said.

Dutch retailer Hema filed for Chapter 15 court protection in the U.S. in the latest step of a debt restructuring as the popular local firm prepares for its sale, Bloomberg News reported. Chapter 15 shields foreign companies from lawsuits by U.S. creditors while they reorganize in another country. The filing came late Wednesday, the same day that Hema’s restructuring plan received support from the vast majority of its senior-ranking bondholders in a U.K. court process.

Payments processor Adyen NV reported slower earnings growth on Thursday, as transactions at online retailers increased but travel industry customers payments fell due to the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reported. A spokesman said the Dutch company, which handles customer payments for the likes of Uber, Facebook and Netflix, had gained new customers after the June collapse of German rival Wirecard, but the impact on revenue and earnings was negligible.

One in 10 businesses have admitted they are at risk of insolvency due to the pandemic. The figure is revealed in the latest business impact of coronavirus survey from the Office for National Statistics, which shows 10 per cent said their enterprise is at “moderate risk of insolvency” and one per cent put the risk at “severe,” Peer2Peer Finance News reported. The survey also found that 12 per cent of the workforce remain on furlough leave, with 67 per cent of furloughed employees receiving top-ups to their pay.

Concern is growing in Germany that a rule introduced as a part of the country’s emergency response to coronavirus is fuelling the creation of thousands of so-called zombie firms that could end up sapping the economy for years to come, the Financial Times reported. Under a government waiver introduced in March, German companies adversely affected by the pandemic do not have to file for insolvency. The rule was supposed to be phased out at the end of September, but justice minister Christine Lambrecht wants to extend it until next March.

The eurozone is likely to suffer a sharp increase in unemployment this autumn even as the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, the European Central Bank has warned, the Financial Times reported. Top ECB policymakers voiced fears that the labour market was lagging behind the rest of the economy at their monetary policy meeting last month, according to minutes published on Thursday.