Privately held restaurant group PizzaExpress said on Tuesday it would close 73 restaurants in the UK, impacting 1,100 jobs, as coronavirus lockdowns and higher costs hurt its business, Reuters reoprted. The UK-based restaurant chain said it has launched a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) to improve its finances by reducing rental agreements and temporarily moving from quarterly to monthly rents. “Hard as this process is, it will protect the jobs of over 9,000 of our colleagues,” Zoe Bowley, the company’s UK and Ireland managing director, said in a statement.

Troubled Spanish renewables firm Abengoa has begun preliminary insolvency proceedings for part of its business in an ongoing restructuring process, the company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Abengoa said the measure would give it more time to finalise negotiations with creditors and protect the interests of its shareholders. The proceedings relate to Abengoa SA, an entity that was already earmarked to be dissolved as part of the restructuring.

New company registrations dipped to a five-year low in the first half of the year, as the coronavirus pandemic chilled the business environment, The Irish Times reported. But figures from credit risk analyst CRIF Vision-net point to more positive figures in June as a potential indicator of recovery. A total of 9,853 company start-ups were registered in Ireland in first half of 2020, the lowest number since the first half of 2015, when 8,981 were registered.

Finablr, the payments group embroiled in an accounting scandal, said on Monday that founder BR Shetty would resign as director and co-chairman with immediate effect. The company, which grew out of a United Arab Emirates remittance house and is part of the Indian entrepreneur’s business empire, last month appointed law firm Skadden to help investigate potential wrongdoing and theft in relation to about £1bn of undisclosed debt discovered on its balance sheet earlier this year, the Financial Times reported.

The Dutch economy looks set for a less dramatic fall in 2020 than previously expected, economic policy adviser CPB said on Monday, Reuters reported. The euro zone’s fifth-largest economy is expected to shrink 5.1% this year because of the coronavirus crisis, the CPB said, before rebounding with growth of 3.2% in 2021. This year’s recession would still be the worst on record, but it would be less deep than the 6.4% contraction the CPB forecast in June. “This is still an unprecedented blow,” CPB Director Pieter Hasekamp said.

EU competition regulators on Monday cleared a 1-billion-euro ($1.2 billion)(915.40 million pounds) plan by Denmark and Sweden to recapitalise virus-hit SAS, saying the measure would prevent the Scandinavian airline’s insolvency, Reuters reported. The plan is part of a larger recapitalisation package which will result in private investors holding a significant stake in SAS following the conversion of outstanding privately-held debt instruments into equity.

CNN Money Switzerland (CNNMS) will cease operations and file for bankruptcy after the coronavirus pandemic hit revenues, the Swiss business media company said on Monday, Reuters reported. While audience figures for the company’s audiovisual programmes rose sharply over the past six months, revenues contracted as business partners hit by the crisis cancelled or postponed contracts, CNNMS said in a statement.

Debenhams has insisted its decision to appoint a potential liquidator was merely a matter of procedure as its administrators continue their search for investors to secure the future of one of Britain’s best-known retailers, the Financial Times reoprted. The department store entered administration in April but has continued to trade while taking a series of measures to reduce costs to cope with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Lazards was appointed to explore a sale in July.

The British government is trying to find a way to offer state-backed loans to debt-laden companies owned by private equity groups, in the hope of rescuing a swath of the British high street, the Financial Times reported. The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy department (Beis) wants to help private equity-backed groups that employ large numbers of people, such as PizzaExpress, Prezzo or Merlin, the owner of Legoland, without breaching EU state aid rules, according to four people involved in the process.

The EU labour market shrank by a record amount in the second quarter, as the number of people in employment fell by 5.5m, the Financial Times reported. The 2.6 per cent quarterly reduction reported by Eurostat on Friday underlined the dramatic impact coronavirus has had on the region’s job market. Many companies have shed large numbers of staff or placed a significant portion of workers on government-backed furlough schemes.