The European Commission has approved a €200 million State scheme to provide loans to Irish manufacturing or exporting businesses that are struggling during the Covid-19 restrictions, The Irish Times reported. Margrethe Vestager, the competition commissioner, gave the green light to the scheme, which she said would “help companies affected by the coronavirus outbreak to weather this crisis and bounce back strongly afterwards”.

German officials expect unemployment in Europe’s largest economy to rise sharply as a consequence of the coronavirus crisis, even though hundreds of thousands of companies have applied for their staff to join a government-subsidised short-term work programme designed to avoid lay-offs, the Financial Times reported.

The coronavirus outbreak will push Germany into recession in the first half of this year and could result in output in Europe’s largest economy contracting by up to 5.4% this year, Germany’s council of economic advisers said on Monday, Reuters reported. Germany is in virtual lockdown, with more than 57,000 people infected and 455 deaths from the virus. Schools, shops, restaurants and sports facilities have closed and many firms have stopped production to help slow the spread of the disease.

Economic sentiment across Europe has suffered its worst monthly fall since records began in 1985, according to data that was mostly collected earlier this month before countries enforced lockdowns to fight coronavirus, the Financial Times reported. The European Commission’s monthly survey of business confidence across the EU tumbled 8.2 percentage points in March from 103 to 94.8, below the long-term average of 100 for the first time since January 2015.

Italian restaurant chain Carluccio’s and rent-to-own retailer BrightHouse have collapsed into administration, putting 4,500 jobs at risk after government-enforced closures exacerbated problems at both groups, the Financial Times reported. Carluccio’s was declared insolvent on Monday, three days after it had appointed restructuring firm FRP Advisory to consider its options, and administrators at Grant Thornton took control of BrightHouse.

Banks in the UK are braced for the country’s top financial supervisor to put a stop to £7.5bn of dividend payments due over the next few weeks in a move designed to shore up capital levels during the coronavirus outbreak, the Financial Times reported. The Prudential Regulation Authority, the supervisory arm of the Bank of England, is running out of time to make a decision on whether to block the payments, with Barclays due to pay a full-year dividend of 6p per share on Friday.

EasyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou has lashed out at critics who have questioned his family’s acceptance of a £60m dividend this month from the low-cost carrier he created more than 20 years ago, which he has said risks insolvency unless it cancels a multibillion-dollar aircraft order from Airbus, the Financial Times reported. This weekend Sir Stelios, whose family controls 34 per cent of easyJet, threatened to launch a campaign to oust the group’s non-executive directors one by one if the board did not cancel the orders from the European aerospace manufacturer, which he estim

Supplies to Sardinia and other Italian islands are at risk after ferry operator Moby SpA suspended some of its services, Bloomberg News reported. Italy’s officials called for an emergency meeting with administrators of Tirrenia, an insolvent company whose assets were bought by Moby in 2011, after they seized the accounts of one of the operator’s unit on Monday, according to a statement from the ministry of transport. Moby has failed to pay a deferred installment for the acquisition. The company responded to the seizure by halting ferry services, it said in an emailed statement.

The U.K. government is loosening its bankruptcy rules to allow struggling businesses to continue trading if they can’t pay their debts because of the impact of the coronavirus. In another sign of how the pandemic is forcing governments to upend policy, Business Secretary Alok Sharma said the changes would allow British companies being reorganized to access supplies and raw materials, and not be placed into administration by creditors. There will also be a clause that temporarily removes the threat of personal liability for company directors during the pandemic.

Like millions of people around the world, Zhang Chunzi borrowed money she thought she’d be able to repay before the coronavirus changed everything, Bloomberg News reported. Now laid off from her job at an apparel exporter in Hangzhou -- one of China’s most prosperous cities -- the 23-year-old is missing payments on 12,000 yuan ($1,700) of debt from her credit card and an online lending platform operated by Jack Ma’s Ant Financial. “I’m late on all the bills and there’s no way I can pay my debt in full,” Zhang said.