Services companies in Italy and Spain suffered a fresh fall in activity last month as restrictions to contain the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic hit businesses, according to a widely watched business survey, the Financial Times reported. The IHS Markit flash services purchasing managers’ index dropped in both countries, with companies reporting sharp declines in demand and activity as a result of the pandemic, data released on Wednesday showed. The Spanish index was slightly better than most economists expected but still fell 1 point to a five-month low of 41.4 in October.

Banco Sabadell’s third-quarter net profit fell 77% from a year ago due to higher provisions, and the Spanish lender on Friday announced an efficiency plan, entailing yet unspecified job cuts in Spain, to counter the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reported. Overall loan loss provisions in the July-September period rose to 302 million euros ($357 million) from 194 million euros a year ago. Still, Spain’s fifth-largest lender beat market expectations thanks to a recovery in its banking activity, both in new mortgage and consumer lending.

Spain is seeking to use its share of the EU’s €750bn coronavirus recovery fund to revitalise its stalled economy, with the government likening it to the country’s 1986 entry into the bloc or the creation of the European single market, the Financial Times reported. Madrid plans to borrow €27bn against future grants from the fund, long before they are formally approved by the EU. Prime minister Pedro Sánchez’s minority administration hopes to use the money to push through a 2021 budget and consolidate power, while boosting an economy hit hard by the coronavirus crisis.

Spanish companies already endured one of Europe’s toughest lockdowns earlier this year as the country became one of the region’s epicentres for the virus, Reuters reported. A fresh surge in infections is compounding the hit to the economy, which is expected to shrink by more than 11% in the year as a whole. Yet fiscal aid to prop up the economy only amounted to 3.7% of GDP against 8.3% in Germany, the Brussels-based think-tank Bruegel estimates. That left small Spanish companies rushing to take up short-term loans as their only lifeline.

The economic impact of the coronavirus resurgence in parts of Europe was laid bare on Monday by data which showed that fresh restrictions to control the spread of the virus had begun to choke off the recovery in the hardest hit country, Spain, the Financial Times reported. The decline in Spanish business sentiment data increases the chances that the eurozone economy will suffer a fresh downturn in the final months of this year, after rebounding from a historic recession caused by the onset of the pandemic in the first half of 2020, economists warned.

Caixabank has agreed to buy Bankia for 4.3 billion euros ($5.1 billion) in an all-share deal that creates Spain’s biggest domestic lender and signals a pick up in mergers among Europe’s banks as they battle the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. The merger will create the largest domestic bank by assets with a combined market value of more than 16 billion euros ($19 billion), in a deal underpinned by annual cost savings of 770 million euros, the companies said on Friday.

Spain’s economy will struggle to recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic to such an extent that it will still be as much as 6 per cent smaller at the end of 2022 than it was before the crisis hit, according to the Bank of Spain, the Financial Times reported. In a grim set of economic projections released on Wednesday, the central bank highlighted the destructive impact of both the initial coronavirus outbreak and of the resurgence in infection rates following the end of the country’s lockdown in June.

While the new board of IL&FS and the directors appointed by it on the subsidiaries of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited (IL&FS) have immunity from prosecution in India for the actions of the group in the past, they may not have the same protection in cases filed against the group firms outside the country, The Indian Express reported.

Troubled Spanish renewables firm Abengoa has begun preliminary insolvency proceedings for part of its business in an ongoing restructuring process, the company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Abengoa said the measure would give it more time to finalise negotiations with creditors and protect the interests of its shareholders. The proceedings relate to Abengoa SA, an entity that was already earmarked to be dissolved as part of the restructuring.

When Santander entered the UK in 2004 with the acquisition of former building society Abbey National, the move completed the group’s transformation from a family-run regional mortgage lender into a multinational giant, the Financial Times reported. At the time Europe’s largest cross-border banking deal, the acquisition marked the culmination of a string of acquisitions under its swashbuckling “presidente” Emilio Botín, whose family have controlled Banco Santander since the early 20th century.