Volkswagen Group, the world’s biggest carmaker, is suspending production at factories across Europe as the coronavirus pandemic hits sales and disrupts supply chains, the company said on Tuesday, The Irish Times reported. The German carmaker, which owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Ducati, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat and Skoda brands, also said that uncertainty about the fallout from coronavirus meant it was impossible to give forecasts for its performance this year.

Germany plans to ease bankruptcy rules to give companies hit by the coronavirus more time to secure financial aid, Bloomberg News reported. The Federal Ministry of Justice is preparing legislation to suspend a rule that forces companies to arrange help or file for insolvency within three weeks of getting into difficulties. The waiver, previously introduced to help businesses hurt by severe flood damage, will be restricted to companies affected by the outbreak that are eligible for government aid or are securing other forms of refinancing, the ministry said in a statement Monday.

Europe must provide liquidity to companies hit by the coronavirus outbreak to avoid a banking crisis, a group of German economists said on Friday, Reuters reported. The warning came as Germany’s top bankers headed to Berlin to confer with the finance minister on possible measures. The economists, affiliated with the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, said a liquidity crunch in the economy could result in a new banking crisis. “Only coordinated fiscal policy measures have the potential to reduce the default risks of banks and thus stabilize the financial system,” they wrote.

The number of bankruptcies in Germany is set to rise this year for the first time since the financial crisis in 2009, the head of Germany’s insolvency administrators’ association said, warning that government aid could not protect all companies, Reuters reported. Europe’s largest economy is braced for a difficult period as the pandemic spreads around the world, severing supply chains and leading to collapsing demand for the exporting powerhouse’s goods. “There will be a rise in insolvencies for the first time since 2009, and it will be a clear increase,” Christoph Niering told Reuters.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG is looking into government support amid the “immense” fallout from the coronavirus, which could burden travel demand for months, Bloomberg News reported. To avoid layoffs after slashing capacity by as much as 50%, the airline is examining the implementation of so-called short-time work, the company said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg on Sunday. The program, known as “Kurzarbeit” in German, involves the government offsetting wages lost when companies are forced to temporarily halt work.

The German Company Heuschkel Druckguß GmbH filed for insolvency proceedings at the District Court of Nuremberg due to imminent insolvency, Spotlightmetal reported. The business operations of the aluminum and zinc die casting foundry will continue without restrictions even after the insolvency application. The wages and salaries of the approximately 90 employees are secured by the insolvency money up to and including April. As the cause of insolvency, the company cited a significant drop in orders from a major customer which could not be offset by the acquisition of new customers.

Panorama, one of two major Berlin-based fashion fairs, has filed for insolvency following its relocation in January, FashionUnited reported. Panorama Fashion Fair Berlin GmbH, represented by its managing director Jörg Wichmann, filed for insolvency proceedings at Berlin’s Charlottenburg District Court on 28 February, according to filings in the German insolvency database. Lawyer Niklas Luetcke has been appointed as provisional insolvency administrator. In January, the fair relocated to Flughafen Tempelhof for the first as it hoped for a fresh start.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz is considering a move that could open an avenue for limited fiscal stimulus in Europe’s largest economy, Bloomberg News reported. Scholz wants to temporarily suspend the constitutional mechanism that restricts the country’s debt levels in order to provide relief for indebted regions, according to an official familiar with the plans. The initiative, which is likely to face strong political opposition, would shift borrowings from municipalities to the federal government, giving them more budget space to invest locally.

India’s shadow banking crisis and revitalized bankruptcy process are creating new opportunities for Deutsche Bank AG as it steps up lending to cash-strapped tycoons and for purchases of distressed assets, Bloomberg News reported. The German lender is seeing three times the volume of financing deals compared with 2018, when the shadow banking problems erupted, according to Rahul Chawla, the head of global credit trading at Deutsche Bank’s India unit.

Investor sentiment in Germany dropped sharply in February as the effects of the coronavirus outbreak weighed on exporters, a survey revealed, adding to an increasingly gloomy picture for Europe’s biggest economy, the Financial Times reported. The Zew survey of financial market experts found that sentiment about the outlook for the German economy fell 18 points this month to a reading of 8.7. This is well below January’s score of 26.7 and significantly worse than the 21.5 economists in a Reuters poll had been expecting.