Privately held restaurant group PizzaExpress said on Tuesday it could shut nearly 15% of its UK restaurants, putting 1,100 jobs at risk, as part of a restructuring deal to help reduce debt and infuse capital, Reuters reported. The company, which operates 449 restaurants in the UK and is currently owned by Chinese private equity firm Hony Capital, said it had started a sale process to find a new owner. PizzaExpress said it will soon launch a company voluntary arrangement in the UK as part of an agreement with some of its secured creditors and its majority shareholder.

Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd is seeking protection from creditors in the United States under Chapter 15 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, which allows a foreign debtor to shield assets in this country, according to a court filing on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Virgin Atlantic’s filing in U.S.

Corporate insolvencies dropped to their lowest point in four years during the second quarter – but experts have warned that it is looking like the calm before the storm, Foodservice Equipment Journal reported. 274 companies in the UK entered administration in the second quarter of 2020, representing a 28% reduction on Q1, according to analysis by KPMG. The quarter was almost entirely a period of lockdown, with government measures having a dramatic impact as consumer spending plummeted.

The German body in charge of regulating auditors is examining the work of EY, the auditor that approved the books of collapsed payment services firm Wirecard, the German Economy Ministry said on Monday, Reuters reported. The ministry said Auditors’ Regulator (Apas) had upgraded a preliminary investigation that had been running since October 2019, when the Financial Times first reported allegations of fraud at Wirecard, into a full formal regulatory inquiry.

National League side Dover Athletic have said they are likely to become insolvent by the end of the month without further investment or an alternative solution, becoming the first professional club to warn of collapse because of the Covid-19 pandemic, The Guardian reported. The chairman, Jim Parmenter, has made the entire squad available on free transfers in an attempt to cut costs, after he claimed the players refused a temporary pay cut of 20%.

Société Générale slumped to a surprise loss in the second quarter after the French bank took a hefty charge as part of an overhaul of its struggling investment bank, the Financial Times reported. The results heaped further pressure on chief executive Frédéric Oudéa, the longest serving head of a large European bank, as the share price fell to 60 per cent lower than at the start of the year. “There is a very good understanding of the challenges of the bank,” Mr Oudéa told the Financial Times on Monday.

UK fitness retailer and gym group DW Sports warned it was on the brink of administration, with 1,700 jobs at risk, after the coronavirus lockdown wiped out its income, the Financial Times reported. The company, which is owned by former footballer Dave Whelan, said on Monday that it was hoping to save “as many gyms as possible” and protect jobs — but that its 75 stores across the UK would permanently close. Martin Long, the company’s chief executive, said the forced closure of the group’s stores and gym chain during lockdown had left it with “a high fixed-cost base and zero income”.

HSBC Holdings PLC warned its bad debt charges could blow past a previous estimate to $13 billion this year and said its profits more than halved, as the coronavirus pandemic hammered the bank’s retail and corporate customers worldwide, Reuters reported. The lender warned its capital reserves could deteriorate, its revenues would come under pressure and it faced heightened geopolitical risk as Europe’s biggest bank set out a gloomier than expected outlook for the second half of the year.

The Wirecard AG scandal could spark a revamp of how the European Union carries out financial supervision, top official Valdis Dombrovskis told the Financial Times, Bloomberg News reported. The German tech company’s collapse shows that previous attempts to bolster financial watchdogs in Brussels were a “missed opportunity” and need another push, according to Dombrovskis, the European Commission’s executive vice-president for economic policy. “We are looking at how we can strengthen the system to avoid that kind of situation happening again,” he said in an FT report published Sunday.

Emerging-market stocks and currencies are within touching distance of erasing their pandemic-fueled losses of 2020, Bloomberg News reported. Too bad the virus is still running riot, economies are shrinking and central banks are getting low on firepower. In fact, the backdrop is so grim that investors may soon start to take the view that prices are starting to defy gravity. After falling more than 30% by March, developing-nation stocks as measured by MSCI Inc.’s benchmark index are just 3% below the level at which they started the year.