As Italy confronts the ravages of an unexpected threat in the coronavirus, fears are intensifying that the economic damage could trigger a far more familiar danger — a banking crisis, the International New York Times reported. Italy’s banks and their formidable piles of bad loans have long constituted a central worry in an economy that has not grown in more than a decade. The nation’s lenders are at once big enough, sufficiently integrated with the world, and adequately shaky to pose a constant menace to the global financial system.

Italy is set to increase the taxpayer bill for keeping bankrupt airline Alitalia SpA aloft to more than 2.1 billion euros ($2.3 billion) over about three years, and the spending is unlikely to stop there, Bloomberg News reported. A new 600 million-euro loan included in a coronavirus stimulus package being discussed by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s cabinet, is part of a plan to re-nationalize the loss-making carrier, according to the latest draft of the document. That’s double what was initially planned, people familiar with the matter said on Saturday.

Production lines fell silent across Europe on Monday. Factories across the region were mothballed. Manufacturers fought to contain the damage of an unprecedented loss of business, the Financial Times reported. As the coronavirus spread, whole countries entered lockdown. Carmakers one after another announced work stoppages as the industry faced its worst disruption in a decade.

Debenhams, the British department store group that went through two insolvency processes last year, has asked landlords for an immediate five-month rent holiday because of the likely impact of coronavirus on trading, the Financial Times reported.

Germany plans to ease bankruptcy rules to give companies hit by the coronavirus more time to secure financial aid, Bloomberg News reported. The Federal Ministry of Justice is preparing legislation to suspend a rule that forces companies to arrange help or file for insolvency within three weeks of getting into difficulties. The waiver, previously introduced to help businesses hurt by severe flood damage, will be restricted to companies affected by the outbreak that are eligible for government aid or are securing other forms of refinancing, the ministry said in a statement Monday.

Europe must provide liquidity to companies hit by the coronavirus outbreak to avoid a banking crisis, a group of German economists said on Friday, Reuters reported. The warning came as Germany’s top bankers headed to Berlin to confer with the finance minister on possible measures. The economists, affiliated with the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, said a liquidity crunch in the economy could result in a new banking crisis. “Only coordinated fiscal policy measures have the potential to reduce the default risks of banks and thus stabilize the financial system,” they wrote.

King Felipe VI of Spain said on Sunday that he was renouncing his personal inheritance from his father, Juan Carlos, who has been implicated in a Swiss offshore account investigation, the International New York Times reported. King Felipe is also stripping his father of his stipend, in an apparent bid to sever any financial linkage between the Spanish royal household and the former monarch. The announcement came as King Felipe has himself risked getting entangled in the financial scandals centering on his father.

In an effort to conquer the virus, Italy’s government this week imposed drastic quarantine measures that have emptied the piazzas of cities that are cornerstones of European civilisation, the Financial Times reported. Like all museums, Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is closed. No one is throwing coins into Rome’s Trevi fountain. From inside the Vatican, Pope Francis live-streamed his regular Wednesday mass instead of greeting pilgrims on St Peter’s Square.

This week’s Budget offered help for Britain’s small and medium-sized enterprises — businesses with fewer than 250 employees — that could struggle as the coronavirus pandemic worsens, the Financial Times reported. Staff sickness is expected to rise just as customer numbers fall when those exposed to the virus follow the official advice and isolate themselves. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, focused on five measures to preserve cash and prevent insolvency among UK businesses.

The number of bankruptcies in Germany is set to rise this year for the first time since the financial crisis in 2009, the head of Germany’s insolvency administrators’ association said, warning that government aid could not protect all companies, Reuters reported. Europe’s largest economy is braced for a difficult period as the pandemic spreads around the world, severing supply chains and leading to collapsing demand for the exporting powerhouse’s goods. “There will be a rise in insolvencies for the first time since 2009, and it will be a clear increase,” Christoph Niering told Reuters.