Two Irish landlords of the liquidated Monsoon business have won a High Court challenge in which they claimed their leases to the women’s fashion stores remained in full force here despite a UK creditors arrangement, The Irish Times reported. Apperley Investments Ltd, Tailwind Investments Ltd and Martina Investments Ltd were landlords to the former Monsoon store on Dublin’s Grafton Street. RESAM Cork UC and RESAM Properties Ltd were landlords for the Monsoon store and the Accessorize store, both on Patrick Street, Cork.

The world will have a smaller airline industry as a result of the coronavirus crisis with many privately funded carriers set to go under and governments throwing "good money after bad" to keep national champions afloat, Wizz Air's CEO said, Reuters reported. Worst hit will be traditional carriers relying on a hub-and-spoke network and business traffic, but Wizz expects demand for its own cheap fares and direct routes to snap back quickly once the pandemic fades, the Hungarian airline’s co-founder said.

Petra Diamonds has abandoned plans to sell the business in favour of a debt-for-equity restructuring, it said on Tuesday, sending its shares lower because of the deal's dilutive effect on existing stakeholders, Reuters reported. The London-listed company, which mines diamonds in South Africa and Tanzania, had put itself up for sale in June as part of the restructuring process but has received no viable offers, it said.

Business groups have called for added supports for companies forced to close once again under the Government’s measures to try to suppress Covid-19 in Ireland, warning that tens of thousands of jobs are at risk, The Irish Times reported. Chamber leaders around the country have called on the Government to introduce supports for impacted businesses quickly and to use the time “wisely” to put in place the appropriate infrastructure to support local economies to re-open safely.

A month-on-month rise in the number of corporate insolvencies in England and Wales may indicate that businesses which were healthy and profitable pre-COVID-19 are now starting to struggle, East Midlands Business Link reported. This is according to the Midlands branch of insolvency and restructuring trade body R3 and comes on the back of figures published by the Government’s Insolvency Service which show that the number of companies entering insolvency increased to 926 in September 2020 compared to August’s figure of 784.

Businesses are being set up in the UK at a record rate, according to the government’s register of national corporate activity, as criminals attempting Covid-related fraud establish companies alongside entrepreneurs creating new ventures, the Financial Times reported. Senior bankers have raised concerns that criminals have formed companies to take out lightly checked government-backed loans. The National Audit Office this month warned that tens of billions could be lost through fraud and defaults.

Eurozone governments plan to go deeper into the red than ever before this year, racking up budget deficits of close to €1tn as they splash out on emergency measures to counter the coronavirus crisis, the Financial Times reported. Draft budget plans published by member states on the European Commission website indicate the 19-country bloc will slide to an aggregate fiscal deficit of €976bn, equal to 8.9 per cent of gross domestic product this year, according to Financial Times calculations.

Some of the world’s top economies could see their credit ratings cut or put on downgrade warnings in the coming months in a second global wave of coronavirus-related revisions, S&P Global’s top sovereign analyst has warned, Reuters reported. S&P’s sovereign group managing director Roberto Sifon-Arevalo told Reuters that the immense costs of supporting health systems, firms and workers through the pandemic was fundamentally altering some countries’ finances for the worse.

France plans to raise 20 billion euros ($23 billion) in quasi-equity loans for small firms hit by the coronavirus crisis by offering investors a state guarantee against the first 2 billion euros in losses, officials said, Reuters reported. Fearing failures among firms which were already saddled with record levels of debt before the crisis, the French government wants the programme up and running by early next year as it battles the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The head of the International Monetary Fund on Sunday called for significant steps to address the increasingly unsustainable debt burdens of some countries, urging creditors and debtors to start restructuring processes sooner rather than later, Reuters reported. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said a six-month extension of the Group of 20 major economies’ freeze in official bilateral payments would help low-income countries hammered by the COVID-19 pandemic, but more urgent action was needed.