Global finance leaders on Tuesday said the world economy had escaped a coronavirus-triggered collapse so far, but warned that failure to conquer the pandemic, maintain stimulus and tackle mounting debt among poor nations could crush a fragile recovery, Reuters reported. At the start of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the IMF issued slightly improved growth forecasts spurred by unexpectedly stronger rebounds from coronavirus lockdowns in the wealthiest countries and China.

A restructuring plan for Portugal’s flag carrier TAP will be sent to the European Commission in November, the secretary of state for the treasury said on Tuesday, which if approved will buy the airline time to repay a huge bailout loan, Reuters reported. TAP asked for state aid in April after the outbreak of the coronavirus forced it to suspend almost all of its 2,500 weekly flights. The European Commission approved a 1.2 billion euro rescue loan in June, contingent on the airline drawing up a restructuring plan within six months, or by the middle of December.

German banks should prepare for a surge in insolvencies as the coronavirus crisis pushes weaker companies over the edge and puts a question mark on the country’s property boom, the Bundesbank said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. With part of a government moratorium on insolvencies now expired, the German central bank said corporate insolvencies could rise by more than 35% by March to more than 6,000 per quarter, a level not seen since 2013.

Businesses across Singapore have been left scrambling to process payments for everything from hotel stays to telephone bills after the city-state’s regulator shut down the payment services of fraudulent German group Wirecard, the Financial Times reported. Cafés, restaurants, hotels and mobile network providers were left with no payment processing systems after the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the de facto central bank, late last month ordered Wirecard to cease payment services in the city-state. Some banks in Singapore had advised their clients to consider switching pay

A consensus is emerging among G20 nations to extend a debt-payment freeze next week for poor countries for an additional six months, a French finance ministry source said on Friday, Reuters reported. Members of the Group of 20 economic powers and the Paris Club of creditor nations agreed in April to suspend until the end of the year debt payments owed to them by poor countries to free up resources for tackling the coronavirus outbreak. G20 finance ministers are due to take a decision on what to do after the end of the year when they hold an online meeting next Wednesday, the source said.

Spanish companies already endured one of Europe’s toughest lockdowns earlier this year as the country became one of the region’s epicentres for the virus, Reuters reported. A fresh surge in infections is compounding the hit to the economy, which is expected to shrink by more than 11% in the year as a whole. Yet fiscal aid to prop up the economy only amounted to 3.7% of GDP against 8.3% in Germany, the Brussels-based think-tank Bruegel estimates. That left small Spanish companies rushing to take up short-term loans as their only lifeline.

Up to £26bn in expected defaults and fraud losses on bounce back loans is a very big number, the Financial Times reported. The National Audit Office’s estimate is a measure of the banks’ success as government functionaries shelling out cash to rescue more than 1m small businesses during the pandemic. It could also be a measure of the banks’ potential failure. After all, £26bn out of £43bn in bounce back loans is a lot to pursue in a year or so when payments start to fall due. That won’t make debt collectors popular. Debt collecting hasn’t made banks popular in the past.

Illimity is evaluating potential bids on 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) of impaired bank loans, a senior executive at the Italian bank said, as disposals resume after the hiatus caused by the coronavirus crisis, Reuters reported. Italy’s 340 billion euro market for problem loans is Europe’s biggest. After more than halving soured debts on their balance sheets in recent years to tackle the legacy of the previous slump, Italian banks are now bracing for an expected wave of defaults caused by COVID-19. Market activity froze at the height of the healthcare emergency.

EasyJet’s losses soared to more than £800m this year, sending the low-cost airline into the red for the first time in its 25-year history, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to threaten the future of companies across the global travel industry, the Financial Times reported. In a sign of increasing desperation for airlines, easyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren urged the British government to prop up the sector further as the company slashes winter flight schedules because of plunging passenger demand.

Germany has presented plans to strengthen financial regulator BaFin’s powers and tighten accounting rules, one day before the start of a parliamentary probe into one of the country’s biggest corporate failures, Bloomberg News reported. The collapse of Wirecard AG this year exposed significant cracks in Germany’s financial oversight, as authorities failed to catch accounting issues at the digital-payments company despite ample warning. Slow decision-making and fragmented responsibilities appeared to allow the problems to go undetected.