Offshore oil driller Valaris PLC is preparing to start talks with creditors to see if they can agree on terms for a possible bankruptcy filing, as it grapples with a $6.5 billion debt burden and an unprecedented plunge in U.S. crude prices, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. Reuters reported last month that the London-based company was working with debt restructuring advisers as it struggled to cope with a rig accident and falling energy prices, Reuters reported. Since then, U.S.

Spain’s economy could contract this year by more than 12% in a worst-case-scenario forecast by the country’s central bank, the first official figures that spell out the potential toll of the coronavirus pandemic on the European Union’s fourth-largest economy, Bloomberg News reported. The economic shock could push the unemployment rate to as high as 21.7% this year, undoing gains achieved in the aftermath of the 2008 global recession and the subsequent European debt crisis. At nearly 14%, Spain’s unemployment rate is already one of the highest in the developed world.

The UK arm of the Belgian-owned bakery chain Le Pain Quotidien is at risk of falling into administration within days, putting 500 jobs under threat unless a buyer is found this week, the Financial Times reported. The restructuring experts Alvarez & Marsal are running an emergency sale of the 26-site café business with the deadline for bids on Wednesday, according to people with knowledge of the process. If no buyer is found during the sale process, known as Project Sunburst according to one person, administrators will be appointed.

A push by some euro area officials to free lenders of their bad debts faces resistance from countries worried that they will bear the costs, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News reported. In northern Europe, where bad loan levels are far lower than in the south, governments and regulators led by Germany don’t yet see the need for the so-called bad bank that officials elsewhere are proposing, the people said, asking to remain anonymous because the discussions are private. The idea also raises legal questions, they said.

Norwegian Air on Monday reported that four Swedish and Danish subsidiaries had filed for bankruptcy and that it had ended staffing contracts in Europe and the United States, putting some 4,700 jobs at risk, Reuters reported. The airline is seeking to convert debt to equity, money from shareholders and Norwegian state guarantees in a bid to survive the coronavirus crisis.

The number of British companies ceasing trading jumped in March in a potential early sign of the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the country’s economy, according to academic research published on Monday, Reuters reported. Analysis from the Enterprise Research Centre - led by staff at the University of Warwick and Aston University in central England - showed a 70% jump in company dissolutions to just over 21,000 in March 2020 compared with the same month a year before. Compared with February, the increase was just over 19%.

European banks are seeking to avoid setting aside billions of euros to cover bad loans after the coronavirus outbreak, in a departure from U.S. competitors collectively taking a $25 billion hit, Bloomberg News reported. European lenders are set to report comparatively small increases in loan loss reserves in the first quarter and plan a similar approach during the rest of the year, according to senior bankers and regulators, who asked not to be identified because the earnings figures have yet to be released.

Politicians in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government on Sunday signalled further support for struggling businesses and consumers in the coronavirus crisis, focusing on hotels, restaurants and pay for short-time workers, Reuters reported. Dehoga, an industry association that includes a large share of often small family-owned operations, told Bild am Sonntag that some 70,000 restaurant and hotel operators, which employ 223,000 people, could face insolvency as they stood to lose up to 10 billion euros of sales by the end of April.

The president of the European Central Bank has said it is “extremely difficult” to know how long the eurozone will be stuck in recession or how deep the downturn will be, as fresh data exposed the sudden loss of business confidence and dynamism in the bloc’s economy, the Financial Times reported. Christine Lagarde said in a statement to the IMF’s virtual meeting on Thursday that the eurozone was heading for “a large contraction in output” and “rapidly deteriorating labour markets” because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Emerging markets fund manager Ashmore lost more than a fifth of its assets in the first quarter as the coronavirus crisis sent stocks and bonds in the developing world into free fall, the Financial Times reported. London-based Ashmore said its assets under management reached $76.8bn at the end of March, down from $98.4bn at the end of 2019. In a trading update on Thursday, it said that the falling value of its investments accounted for $18bn of the loss, while investors withdrew another $3.6bn from Ashmore’s funds.