A recent survey from the Federation of Small Businesses predicts just under 5% of its members will close in 2021. With the government reporting some 5.9 million small businesses in the UK, this means we could be looking at some 250,000 insolvencies over the coming period, HRNews.co.uk reported. Some 1400 firms responded to the FSB’s survey, which also recorded 58% of businesses predicting an overall reduction in profitability, and nearly 25% of businesses having reduced the number of employees since the start of last year. 14% say they’ll be cutting numbers again within three months.

The Treasury has extended by a week the consultation period on proposed insolvency changes for payment institutions (PIs) and electronic money institutions (EMIs), which include establishing a new special administration regime (SAR), AccountancyDaily.co reported. The move is in response to findings from last year’s Payments Landscape Review, which noted a number of failing in the existing insolvency process for consumers using PIs and EMIs, such as card, mobile and electronic wallets.

France on Thursday took a tough line against any takeover of retailer Carrefour by a foreign company, dealing a major blow to a near $20 billion bid approach by Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard, Reuters reported. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told Reuters that the government wanted to preserve the country’s food security and sovereignty. “Having Carrefour being bought by a foreign company would be a major difficulty for all of us,” Le Maire said in an interview at the Reuters Next conference.

A failed attempt to settle debt insurance on a struggling French car-rental company is the latest blow to the $9 trillion market in credit derivatives, but this time the focus is on speculators, Bloomberg News reported. Protection buyers who didn’t hold any of Europcar Mobility Group’s underlying debt were left with nothing, due to a shortage of bonds to settle contracts at the auction on Wednesday. Flaws in the instruments’ capacity to protect against losses have undermined confidence in the credit derivatives market in recent years.

Britain’s OneWeb said on Friday that SoftBank Group Corp and Hughes Network Systems LLC had invested in the satellite communications company, bringing its total funding to $1.4 billion, Reuters reported. Founded by entrepreneur Greg Wyler in 2014, OneWeb aims to provide high-speed broadband internet services globally using low earth orbit satellites, taking on a similar offering by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The funding would allow OneWeb to cover the costs for its network of 648 satellites, expected to be ready by the end of 2022.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Fair Business Banking in the U.K. has started a six month project, with support from City law firm Humphries Kerstetter, Accountancy Daily reported. Kevin Hollinrake, co-chair of the APPG, said: ‘In recent years there have been a number of high-profile failures in the insolvency industry. The APPG has also received its fair share of complaints about the system.

For a year expected to mark a turning point for pandemic-stricken European airlines, 2021 is off to a rough start, Reuters reported. A resurgence of COVID-19 lockdowns has killed off a fragile bookings upturn, executives and analysts said, as insolvent Norwegian Air finally axed its long-haul operations yesterday. The setbacks deal a blow to airline hopes that the promise of vaccines would put the worst of the crisis behind them, and set the stage for a summer rebound.