Fashion retailer New Look is to undertake a second debt restructuring in as many years, as it grapples with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on its already-struggling business, the Financial Times reported. The group will convert £440m of debt into equity and inject £40m of new cash. It will also launch another company voluntary agreement, to switch most of its stores on to turnover-based rents, in a move that if successful would set a significant precedent in the sector.

Dutch bank ABN Amro said it would slash the size of its corporate and investment banking business after a series of high-profile losses highlighted excessive risk-taking in the division and exacerbated the impact of coronavirus, the Financial Times reported. The state-backed bank on Wednesday said it would wind down all of its non-European corporate banking operations and stop providing trade and commodity finance, following a review led by Robert Swaak, the new chief executive.

KBC Bank Ireland’s chief executive, Peter Roebben, has given his strongest indication that the bank may sell long-standing problem mortgages to avoid being forced by regulators to set aside more expensive capital against these loans, The Irish Times reported. “We have to keep the option of a potential sale of the deeper, longer-lasting historical non-performing book,” Mr Roebben said in a wide-ranging interview with The Irish Times.

Eurozone industrial production rose less than economists had expected in June, raising questions about how soon the nascent recovery in the bloc’s pandemic-stricken economy will run out of steam, the Financial Times reported. The 9.1 per cent rise in eurozone factory output in June showed that the region’s manufacturers are bouncing back from the heavy blow of the coronavirus pandemic. But the rebound was less than the 10 per cent consensus forecasts of economists surveyed by Reuters.

“Hard times are here” was how chancellor Rishi Sunak greeted this morning’s data showing the UK officially in its first recession — defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth — since the global financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. The 20.4 per cent fall in output — the biggest UK quarterly fall ever and the largest in any of the world’s major developed economies — led to calls from business groups for “bold action”, especially as government job support schemes begin to wind down.

The High Court has appointed joint provisional liquidators to a Dublin city centre based nursing home, The Irish Times reported. The application was in relation to St Monica’s Nursing Home Ltd, which ran the elderly care facility at Belvedere Place, Dublin had catered for 46 residents, and had employed 65 full-time and part-time employees.

The High Court has expedited a trial at which it would be determined whether luxury car manufacturer McLaren Group could obtain the release of certain security for the benefit of its senior noteholders, failing which a financial restructuring which was contingent on that release could not be implemented…The court concluded that, absent determination of the proceedings within one month, McLaren Group would have no choice but to enter an insolvency process and that this justified expedition in this case, Lexology reported.

Coronavirus-triggered cash-flow problems could exacerbate long-standing issues for Italian energy retailers, warned Paolo Ghislandi, secretary general at the Italian association of energy wholesalers and traders (AIGET), ICIS reported. This could cause insolvency for smaller retailers, reducing competition in the market. “If regulator ARERA fails to address these issues, energy suppliers will find themselves operating in with an increasingly volatile and risky sector,” he told ICIS.

Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) on Tuesday posted a 44% slump in second-quarter profit, largely due to the economic impact of the pandemic in the countries in which it operates, but confirmed its 2020 targets, Reuters reported. The Austrian lender, which does business across central and eastern Europe, said consolidated net profit came in at 192 million euros ($226 million) in the three months per end-June, beating analyst expectations of 143 million euros.

Corporate insolvencies may increase this winter, with new research from the insolvency and restructuring trade body R3 indicating that a steep rise may start as early as this October, Scottish Legal News reported. The R3 research – based on a member survey of insolvency and restructuring professionals – highlights that an overwhelming majority (93.7 per cent) of respondents expect corporate insolvency numbers to rise over the next year, with nearly six-in-ten (56 per cent) predicting that the increase will occur between October and December 2020.