A dip in economic sentiment in Spain this month indicates that the recent rise in Covid-19 infections is taking its toll on the nascent recovery under way in the eurozone, the Financial Times reported. The European Commission’s monthly survey of economic sentiment across the eurozone rose to 87.7 in August from 82.3 in the previous month. However, economists looked with concern at the fall in sentiment in Spain, where the number of new infections has risen the most in the region. The country’s economic sentiment indicator fell to 88.1 in August from 90.6 in the previou

Deutsche Bank AG has submitted a bid for some of Wirecard AG’s German assets, but the administrator of the insolvent payments company considers it too low, people familiar with the matter said, Bloomberg News reported. The offer from Germany’s largest lender for Wirecard Bank and some related companies was one of several, the people said. All the non-binding bids were well below 100 million euros ($119 million), which Wirecard administrator Michael Jaffe sees as a minimum to proceed with a sale rather than a liquidation.

Newspaper and magazine group Archant is close to being sold to a private equity investor as part of a restructuring deal that would jettison its pension to the government’s retirement lifeboat fund and make shares in the company “worthless,” the Financial Times reported. In a letter to shareholders, the publisher of The New European said London-based Rcapital Partners had agreed to take over Archant, pending the approval of a planned company voluntary arrangement, a type of restructuring process used by UK businesses to reduce their debts.

Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA said it will need more funds to avert insolvency and announced plans to scale back the discount long-haul operations that it pioneered in order to survive, Bloomberg News reported. The beleaguered carrier, which reported a pre-tax loss of 4.8 billion kroner ($541 million) for the first half, said it will require additional working capital in the first quarter of 2021 to meet its obligations and will consider another private placement of shares as well as selling assets.

The district court of Munich has opened the insolvency proceedings regarding the assets of Wirecard, which were applied for on June 25, 2020, according to a note from the company, Crowdfund Insider reported. The current preliminary insolvency administrator Dr. jur. Michael Jaffé from the law firm JAFFÉ Rechtsanwälte was appointed as the insolvency administrator. A contract to sell Wirecard Brazil SA has already been signed and the sales process for the Wirecard North America Inc. subsidiary is said to be well advanced.

Low-income countries face long-term scarring that could undo gains in cutting poverty achieved over the past seven to 10 years because of damage from the Covid-19 pandemic, the International Monetary Fund said, Bloomberg News reported. “Absent a sustained international effort to support them, permanent scars are likely to harm development prospects, exacerbate inequality, and threaten to wipe out a decade of progress reducing poverty,” Daniel Gurara, Stefania Fabrizio, and Johannes Wiegand, economists at the Washington-based institution, wrote in a blog Thursday.

UK sandwich chain Pret A Manger has said it will cut 2,890 jobs, or almost a third of its workforce, as it reshapes its business after a steep drop in demand for its takeaway food in the pandemic, the Financial Times reported. The company, owned by the Luxembourg-based consumer goods group JAB Holdings, said on Thursday that its UK staff numbers would fall to 6,000 after sales dropped to the levels of a decade ago, “when the business was considerably smaller”.

Greece’s conservative government has drafted a bill which overhauls its insolvency code, seeking to help over-indebted households and businesses make a fresh start after a crippling decade-long debt crisis, Reuters reported. More than 1 million individuals and 300,000 businesses owe money to banks and the state, legacy of a decade-long financial crisis that shrank the country’s economy by a quarter.

Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc’s biggest-ever loss presents Chief Executive Officer Warren East with some difficult choices to fortify the British manufacturer against the damage done by the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. The shares fell as much as 10% after the jet engine-maker said Thursday that it’s planning to raise at least 2 billion pounds ($2.6 billion) from disposals and is considering other options to raise cash.

Germany extended another crisis tool to prevent corporate bankruptcies, a move that critics say will store up bigger problems later for Europe’s largest economy, Bloomberg News reported. The longer suspension on insolvency filings has raised alarm bells that it’s masking a growing credit risk that could explode into a wave of bankruptcies when the moratorium ends. It may also be creating a cohort of zombie companies that hold back investment and innovation and act as a drain on the economy.