An anomaly in credit insurance on Europcar Mobility Group could prove lucrative for some traders as the French rental-car firm seeks to restructure 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) of debt, Bloomberg News reported. The cost of buying Europcar’s bonds and credit-default swaps in a combined trade has risen to 110% of the notes’ face value, indicating that traders expect they’ll get more than par if the insurance pays out, according to Jochen Felsenheimer, who trades both markets as managing director at XAIA Investment GmbH. He doesn’t have a position in Europcar.

New restrictions imposed across Europe to curb the spread of Covid-19 forced Europcar Mobility Group to withdraw its earnings guidance for the remainder of this year, with the firm anticipating a return to pre-virus trading only by 2023, Bloomberg News reported. The French car rental group pulled its prediction for the 2020 financial year “due to the uncertainties derived from the second wave” of the virus, it said in a statement on Monday as it presented its third quarter results.

France plans to raise 20 billion euros ($23 billion) in quasi-equity loans for small firms hit by the coronavirus crisis by offering investors a state guarantee against the first 2 billion euros in losses, officials said, Reuters reported. Fearing failures among firms which were already saddled with record levels of debt before the crisis, the French government wants the programme up and running by early next year as it battles the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

KLM, the Dutch arm of airline group Air France-KLM, will likely have to cut more jobs than the thousands of layoffs already announced due to the coronavirus pandemic, its chief executive Pieter Elbers said in a message to his staff, Reuters reported. Elbers warned that COVID-19 will limit flights more extensively than the 20-25% drop it had anticipated for next year. “We now expect even lower production, which ultimately means we need fewer people”, Elbers said in his message, seen by Reuters.

A French official has said it might be difficult for Lebanon’s banks to prevent savers losing some of their deposits, according to the minutes of a meeting in which France outlined steps to help the crippled banking industry, Reuters reported. The comments were made during Sept. 10 talks in Paris between senior French officials and a delegation from the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL). Reuters reviewed a copy of the minutes, marked confidential.

Shares in Europcar tumbled 30% in early trading on Tuesday, after the car rental group, battered by the coronavirus pandemic as travel dwindles worldwide, said it aimed to try and restructure its debts, Reuters reported. Most companies exposed to the tourism sector and other industries hit the hardest by the crisis made it through the first few months of the pandemic, thanks in part to government aid, such as state-backed loans. But some are now reaching a crunch point which is forcing them to address their debt piles.

France has launched a €100bn plan to rescue its economy from the coronavirus crisis with big investments in green energy and transport as well as industrial innovation, the Financial Times reported.  Announcing the “France Relance” (France Relaunch) plan in Paris on Thursday, Prime Minister Jean Castex said its “historic ambition and size” made it almost four times as large as the national plan introduced after the 2008 financial crisis. At 4 per cent of gross domestic product, it was the “most massive” plan unveiled in Europe so far relative to the size of the economy, he

Société Générale slumped to a surprise loss in the second quarter after the French bank took a hefty charge as part of an overhaul of its struggling investment bank, the Financial Times reported. The results heaped further pressure on chief executive Frédéric Oudéa, the longest serving head of a large European bank, as the share price fell to 60 per cent lower than at the start of the year. “There is a very good understanding of the challenges of the bank,” Mr Oudéa told the Financial Times on Monday.

French consumer confidence declined in July, denting hopes that the country’s economy would bounce back rapidly from the coronavirus crisis, the Financial Times reported. After an initial rebound in June, the French statistics agency’s consumer sentiment index fell by two points to 94 in July, below the average of 99 forecast by economists in a poll by Reuters. A score below 100 indicates that consumer confidence is lower than its long-term average, whereas a score above that mark suggests that sentiment is above average.

Investment firm Eurazeo has asked bidders to submit last-ditch bids in September for French car rental firm Europcar Mobility Group SA as it seeks to avert a painful restructuring, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, Reuters reported. The Paris-listed firm has attracted takeover interest from Volkswagen but a bid has yet to materialise as the German car maker remains wary of the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic on the car rental industry, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.