Restaurant chains Ask and Zizzi have been sold in a £70m prepack administration deal that means another 1,200 job losses in the UK’s already struggling casual dining sector, the Financial Times reported. The sale of Azzurri to TowerBrook Capital Partners, announced late on Friday, comes as the pandemic adds to the pain for a sector already under pressure from hefty debts and intense competition after a decade of rapid, private equity-backed expansion.

Russian incomes in the second quarter plunged by the most since the country’s 1998 default as the economy of the world’s biggest energy exporter took a double blow from the pandemic and slump in global oil demand, Bloomberg News reported. Real disposable incomes fell 8% between April and June compared with a year ago, the Federal Statistics Service reported Friday. Data for the first quarter, which earlier showed a drop, were revised up to a 1.2% increase. “This situation with incomes is pointing to a lot of problems,” said Evgeny Nadorshin, chief economist at PF Capital in Moscow.

The problem is both extensive and urgent. Within months, the UK government will start dismantling the schemes it put in place to help small businesses through the Covid-19 lockdown, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. The loss of all those cheques for furloughed employees is bad enough, let alone the end of tax deferrals. But there is worse to come next spring, when the state starts demanding the repayment of the loans it has guaranteed (£46bn now and rising), which more than 2m smaller businesses are expected by then to have taken out to help eke out their cash flows.

In the wake of the Wirecard accounting scandal, exchange operator Deutsche Boerse said on Friday it was proposing rules to enable it to quickly expel companies from the leading DAX index if those firms file for insolvency, Reuters reported. The ruling, if adopted, could mean that Wirecard would leave the DAX index in August, rather than during a regular review of the index makeup in September.

French bank Natixis will merge its commodities and infrastructure operations to focus on clean energy in a restructuring sources said was accelerated by a series of loss-making loans to oil traders, Reuters reported. The move by one of the most active banks in commodities lending highlights the struggles of businesses connected to a sector grappling with an oil price collapse, rising bankruptcies and growing pressure to switch attention to greener fuels.

Atlantia, the infrastructure group controlled by the billionaire Benetton family, has agreed to sell a majority stake in its toll road business following a bitter dispute with the Italian government over the fatal collapse of a Genoa bridge in 2018, the Financial Times reported. Under the terms of the deal, Atlantia will sell at least 51 per cent of its toll road business, Autostrade per l’Italia, to state-owned Italian lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, the government said on Wednesday.

The eurozone’s nascent recovery from the economic damage done by the coronavirus pandemic faces several potential threats, Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, has warned, after keeping its monetary policy on hold, the Financial Times reported. The ECB governing council on Thursday hit pause after four months of ramping up its monetary stimulus, as it entered what analysts called “a wait and see” period to assess the speed of economic recovery before launching new measures.

More than 200 of Britain’s top financial experts have joined forces to design initiatives to help small businesses restructure and repay as much as 35 billion pounds in “unsustainable” COVID-19 relief debt, Reuters reported. TheCityUK Recapitalisation Group on Thursday proposed the launch of a UK Recovery Corporation (UKRC) to oversee a massive pile of government-guaranteed loans issued since lockdown, offering more manageable terms to borrowers and preventing a wave of bankruptcies borne by the taxpayer. “COVID-19 is a 100-year storm which has caused untold economic damage.

PizzaExpress is heading for a takeover by its lenders as early as this month in a debt-for-equity swap with Chinese owner Hony Capital that is also likely to involve closing some of its high street restaurants hard hit in the pandemic, the Financial Times reported. Investors in the £465m of senior secured bonds that back the company are in advanced talks over a restructuring deal, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

Coronavirus and the end-2020 Brexit deadline have left UK firms facing historic uncertainties, prompting many to find more flexible ways to protect their foreign exchange exposure — even if these come at a higher initial cost, Reuters reported. The pandemic is expected to cause Britain’s biggest economic contraction in 300 years and swell unemployment, debt and corporate bankruptcies. An added risk is that Britain could cast off from the European Union next year without having agreed any trade deals.