The Government has been urged to make temporary changes to the insolvency laws to prevent businesses unable to meet debts due to the coronavirus from going into bankruptcy, The Irish Times reported. Dublin-based legal firm Philip Lee said certain aspects of the regulations here needed to be “dialled down” to enable companies trade through the current crisis. In particular, it called for the penalties for trading while insolvent to be temporarily lifted.

The World Bank is seeing “a huge willingness” on the part of official bilateral creditors to suspend debt payments by the world’s poorest countries so they can focus on fighting the coronavirus pandemic, a top Bank official said on Monday, Bloomberg News reported. World Bank Managing Director Axel van Trotsenburg said the Group of 20 major economies and the Group of Seven (G7) had been largely supportive of a call by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund for a temporary halt in debt payments. “Everybody understands that we need to help the poorest countries.

More than 45,000 mortgage payments breaks have been granted by banks or are close to completion, new figures show, The Irish Times reported. This is equivalent to 5 per cent of all mortgages in the Republic. Data from Banking Payments Federation Ireland shows close to 14,000 payment breaks for SMEs were granted or are in the process of being agreed over the past three weeks. In addition, banks are “well advanced” in processing 3,200 requests for working capital facilities, chief executive Brian Hayes. He said it has largely been SMEs seeking payment breaks to date.

France will reallocate almost €1.2bn of African development aid to the fight against coronavirus as part of President Emmanuel Macron’s effort to focus international attention on the health and economic impact of the pandemic on the continent, the Financial Times reported.

British department store group Debenhams went into administration for the second time in 12 months on Thursday, seeking to protect itself from legal action by creditors during the coronavirus crisis that could have pushed it into liquidation, Reuters reported. With Britain in lockdown during the pandemic, Debenhams’ 142 UK stores are closed, while the majority of its 22,000 workers are being paid under the government’s furlough scheme. It continues to trade online.

The G20 group is planning to offer lower income countries a moratorium on bilateral government loan repayments as part of an “action plan” to tackle the coronavirus pandemic and stave off an emerging markets debt crisis, a senior G20 official said, the Financial Times reported. The initiative, due to be finalised at a finance ministers’ meeting this week, would see a freeze on sovereign debt repayments for six or nine months, or possibly through to 2021, in line with an appeal last month from the IMF and World Bank.

Germany’s economy, Europe’s largest, will probably shrink by 9.8% in the second quarter, its biggest decline since records began in 1970, due to measures imposed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, the country’s leading think tanks said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. That would be more than double the drop seen in the first quarter of 2009, during the global financial crisis, the economic institutes said. Germany has been in virtual lockdown for several weeks.

Italian government bond yields rose on Wednesday after European Union finance ministers failed to agree a rescue package to help economies recover from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, Reuters reported. Diplomatic sources and officials said a feud between Italy and the Netherlands over what conditions should be attached to euro zone credit for governments fighting the pandemic was blocking progress on half a trillion euros worth of aid.

The German and French economies are in the grip of historic recessions which are set to wipe out many years of growth in only a few months, according to forecasts published on Wednesday as leading bodies warned of the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the global economy and trade, the Financial Times reported.

The Belgian economy could contract by 8% this year due to measures to contain the coronavirus before a sharp rebound in 2021, the country’s central bank and national planning agency said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. That rebound could be as much as 8.6%, although the bank and agency said their figures should be seen as a broad macroeconomic “scenario” rather than a firm granular forecast and that they were based on a number of conditions, with risks.