The IoD is calling for emergency insolvency measures to prevent widespread company collapses, Business News Wales reported. Under current laws, the board of directors has a strict duty to cease trading if the company is facing insolvency, and may face personal financial or legal liabilities at a later date if they seek finance instead of doing so. The IoD therefore calls on the Government to relax existing insolvency obligations – including a moratorium on the current offence of wrongful trading.

The UK government is eyeing urgent changes to insolvency laws to prevent companies unable to meet debts due to the impact of coronavirus from being forced to file for bankruptcy, the Financial Times reported. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy canvassed insolvency and restructuring experts this week on a possible suspension of wrongful trading laws and new measures to protect retail and hospitality groups forced to stop trading because of the government’s nationwide lockdown, according to two people familiar with the matter.

UK small lenders are warning that hundreds of thousands of vulnerable customers could become “mortgage prisoners” if the government does not grant wider access to emergency funding schemes to support credit during the coronavirus pandemic, the Financial Times reported. Non-bank, specialist lenders play a key role in providing home loans to three quarters of a million people who cannot borrow from mainstream banks, as well as financing small businesses and providing consumer finance such as point-of-sale credit.

The global airline industry faces losing more than $250bn in revenues, according to the latest forecast from a trade body that has been forced to slash its outlook again as coronavirus spreads. The hit would amount to a more than 40 per cent fall in revenues from 2019, Iata, the industry trade body warned on Tuesday, the Financial Times reported. It is up from a prediction of $113bn made a few days ago and an initial forecast of $30bn at the start of the crisis.

The challenge of responding to the devastating impact of coronavirus is a defining moment for this generation of economic policymakers, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Part of that must be a reappraisal of central bank mandates. As governments unleash huge fiscal efforts to combat the economic effects of Covid-19, one risk they face is that yields on government debt start to soar. If that happens, it would undermine the entire public policy response to the coronavirus by making government debt more expensive.

Europe’s steelmakers are cutting production and idling factory lines as an industry already buckling under a severe market downturn girds itself for the economic fallout from coronavirus, the Financial Times reported.

Two of the UK’s largest peer-to-peer platforms are “urgently” seeking access to government schemes and financing to help them keep lending, as the coronavirus pandemic increases the risk of loan defaults by individuals and small businesses, the Financial Times reported. RateSetter, one of the UK’s biggest P2P lenders with more than £800m on its loan book, has called on the Bank of England and the Treasury to allow it access to stimulus schemes that provide liquidity to banks.

Burger King, Carluccio’s and Yo! Sushi are among hundreds of businesses in the UK planning to withhold rents this week as they battle to conserve cash to survive the coronavirus outbreak, the Financial Times reported. Alasdair Murdoch, chief executive of Burger King UK, said he would skip rent payments due on the chain’s more than 500 British restaurants to free up funds to pay staff, after the government announced that those who did not pay would not forfeit their lease.

Consumer confidence plummeted to a five-year low in the eurozone this month, according to new data from the European Commission that give a first glimpse of the economic toll that efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic are taking, the Financial Times reported. The commission’s eurozone flash consumer confidence indicator fell a record 5 points to minus 11.6, its lowest level since 2014 and below its long-term average. The wider gauge of EU consumer confidence dropped 4.5 points, back  to its long-term average of minus 10.4.

Laura Ashley Holdings said on Monday it will permanently shut 70 stores and cut hundreds of jobs as the struggling fashion retailer appointed administrators following a damaging blow to its business from the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reported. The pandemic has compounded challenges faced by British retailers. Laura Ashley, a favourite of late Princess Diana in its 1980s heyday, has seen sales fall, store closures and weakness at its home furnishings business.