Virgin Atlantic is still talking with the British government about a bailout package to cope with the devastating effects of the coronavirus outbreak on travel as well as focusing on private sector funding, a company spokeswoman told Reuters. The comments came after the Sunday Telegraph reported here that founder Richard Branson was seeking a buyer for the airline and had set a May-end deadline for a sale, and that talks with the government for a 500 million pound ($618.35 million) bailout package had been "effectively shelved,” Reuters reported.

The Swiss economy is expected to suffer its biggest contraction since the mid-1970s this year and recover only slowly in 2021, the government revealed in a bleak new outlook, Bloomberg News reported. The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs in Bern slashed its forecast on Thursday, saying the economy was expected to shrink 6.7% in 2020, faring worse than it did during the financial crisis. That’s because in addition to the downturn globally, private consumption in Switzerland would face headwinds from rising unemployment and people’s uncertainty about the future.

Credit Suisse Group AG was stung by the collapse of Luckin Coffee Inc. in China following an accounting scandal, which led to a five-fold increase in Asian loan-loss provisions, Bloomberg News reported. The Swiss bank set aside 97 million Swiss francs ($100 million) for soured loans, primarily related to three cases, the largest of which was Luckin Coffee, according to a person familiar with the matter. The bank only referred to a “Chinese food and beverage company” in its earnings statement Thursday.

Banco BPM SpA may deepen cost cuts and branch closures and slow planned investments as the coronavirus pandemic weighs on profitability, Chief Executive Officer Giuseppe Castagna said, Bloomberg News reported. Italy’s third-largest bank unveiled its four-year strategic plan just days before the country entered a nationwide lockdown, with a 0.1% contraction as its worst-case scenario for the economy. Bloomberg Economics now expects output to shrink by more than 13% over the full year.

UniCredit boosted its provisions for potential loan losses by €900m in preparation for a sharp economic contraction, an early indication of the severe impact the coronavirus pandemic will have on the fragile European banking system, the Financial Times reported. Italy’s largest bank by assets made the decision after estimating that the eurozone gross domestic product will shrink 13 per cent this year, before a 10 per cent rebound in 2021, according to a statement on Wednesday. It stressed that the “unprecedented situation” made financial forecasting “difficult”.

The United Nations is calling for the creation of a global authority to help implement the temporary suspension of debt obligations from developing countries during the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. The proposal will enable private creditors to join the debt payments pause and allow countries use resources to fight the new illness, said Stephanie Blankenburg, head of debt and development finance at UNCTAD, the UN’s trade and development agency.

European bank stocks are trading close their steepest-ever discount to U.S. rivals and early signals show that first-quarter earnings may only reinforce the gap, Bloomberg News reported. The continent’s lenders, already in a tough spot before the coronavirus outbreak hit, are likely to detail more worrying news for their embattled investors. In Germany, Deutsche Bank AG may have seen credit trading weigh on its markets revenue while Commerzbank AG probably started to set aside more funds for troubled loans.

The co-owner of Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. said it’s unable to invest more in Richard Branson’s struggling U.K. airline, and raised the possibility it could face going through insolvency proceedings, Bloomberg News reported. Delta Air Lines Inc., which owns a 49% stake in Virgin Atlantic, can’t help out because it’s consumed with its own problems and has already bumped up against U.K. limits on foreign airline ownership, Ed Bastian, the U.S. company’s chief executive officer, said Thursday. “With our crisis in cash, we need to protect our own business.

The number of soured U.K. commercial property loans started rising in 2019 for the first time in eight years. Now, it’s set to skyrocket. The coronavirus outbreak will trigger as much as 10 billion pounds ($12.3 billion) of losses and write-offs on loans tied to U.K. stores and malls, according to a survey of lenders by Cass Business School. That’s after a slump in retail property saw the value of bad loans spike by more than a third last year, though to a still relatively low 2.9 billion pounds.

The collapse of Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd. after the briefest of fights indicates the world’s weakest airlines have little time to secure funds before they succumb to the coronavirus, Bloomberg News reported. The debt-laden carrier became the outbreak’s biggest airline scalp when it handed control to administrators on Tuesday. A near-halt in passenger revenue overwhelmed the Brisbane-based company in less than two months. “We should get used to news of this kind,” said Volodymyr Bilotkach, a lecturer in air-transport management at the Singapore Institute of Technology.