A financial scandal has swept through London and the United Arab Emirates, centered on allegations of fraud at the two core companies of the Abu Dhabi-based tycoon Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, Bloomberg News reported. Both NMC Health Plc and Finablr Plc have had their shares suspended in London, with NMC losing its place in the FTSE 100 index of leading U.K.-listed companies.

The UK agency tasked with unwinding Carillion is preparing to sue KPMG for £250m over alleged negligence in its audits of the outsourcing group that collapsed in 2018, the Financial Times reported. The significant claim will be the latest blow to the Big Four accounting firm, which is also under investigation by regulators for its work on Carillion. It is expected to be the first time that liquidators working for the British government have attempted to sue a large audit firm to recoup losses from a major insolvency.

Italian industrial production fell almost 30% as companies were crippled by a near total lockdown on the economy caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. Production fell 28.4% in March from the previous month, national statistics bureau Istat said Monday. Production of machinery and equipment, one of Italy’s main exports, weighed the most on the overall figure with a 39.7% decline. Textiles plunged 51%. Italy, one of the original epicenters of the virus in Europe, began a regional lockdown in late February before expanding to the whole country in early March.

Deutsche Bank AG is offering a subordinated bond to boost its capital ratio as the bank girds itself for the deepest recession in almost a century.

Plastic car parts maker Novares went into temporary receivership at the end of April, one of the first big French firms to seek protection from creditors due to the coronavirus crisis, despite government bailout schemes and loan guarantees, Reuters reported. Novares, whose sales have collapsed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, said on Monday it had taken the step after struggling to find a rapid agreement with its banks and shareholders and solve a coronavirus-related cash crunch.

Retail and property chiefs have warned that the government’s business bailout package of reliefs, grants and loans will not be sufficient to stop the “imminent collapse of many businesses,” the Financial Times reported. In a letter to small business minister Paul Scully and chancellor Rishi Sunak, the British Retail Consortium said the crisis “facing parts of the retail sector . . . must be addressed urgently ahead of the June quarter [rent] day”. The letter was also signed by the British Property Federation and Revo, which represents the top shopping centre owners.

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, has implored eurozone governments to come up with a more powerful common fiscal response to the economic slump caused by coronavirus, warning of the dangers of divergence between the bloc’s members, the Financial Times reported. Addressing the State of the Union conference, organised by the European University Institute in Florence, on Friday, Ms Lagarde said a “common European fiscal response is highly desirable”, adding that it needed to be “swift, sizeable and symmetrical”.

Germany is working on a “concrete model” to aid Lufthansa, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said on Sunday, amid a political row over whether the state should take a strategic shareholding and play an active role in the stricken airline, Reuters reported. Altmaier’s comments followed calls by the Social Democratic Party, junior partners in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition, to tie aid for Lufthansa to protecting jobs, cutting the dividend and giving the government a say on strategy. “For me it’s important that we don’t exert any influence on business decisions.

German minerals firm K+S is preparing a potential application for state aid as the company grapples with a high debt load and the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, people close to the matter said, Reuters reported. The potash and salt company has no liquidity issues but wants to secure several hundreds of millions of euros in state-backed loans should financing via the capital markets remain difficult in the wake of the pandemic, the people said. No final decision on whether the company will actually apply for a bailout has been taken, one of the people added. K+S declined to comment.

Norway’s central bank cut interest rates to a record low of zero but said it was unlikely to go negative as the rich Scandinavian country faces up to the twin shocks of coronavirus and an oil price collapse, the Financial Times reported. Norges Bank said on Thursday that the 0.25 percentage point cut would not prevent Covid-19 from having “a substantial impact on the Norwegian economy but can help dampen the downturn”, including by stopping high unemployment becoming entrenched.