Sweden

Sweden’s highly contested response to Covid-19 left much of the economy open. Even so, the country is now headed for its worst recession since World War II, Bloomberg News reported. Scandinavia’s biggest economy will shrink 7% this year, Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Tuesday. Shortly after she spoke, the debt office revealed an historic 30-fold spike in borrowing to cover emergency spending amid record job losses. A separate survey showed 40% of businesses in Sweden’s service sector now fear bankruptcy.

Scandinavia’s biggest network airline, SAS AB, is eliminating as many as 5,000 jobs, marking the first permanent staff cuts by a major European carrier in the face of collapsing travel demand, Bloomberg News reported. The Stockholm-based company said Tuesday that the dismissals, amounting to 40% of the workforce, are necessary because employees have an average notice period of six months and it needs to prepare for what may be years of sluggish demand.

Norwegian Air on Monday reported that four Swedish and Danish subsidiaries had filed for bankruptcy and that it had ended staffing contracts in Europe and the United States, putting some 4,700 jobs at risk, Reuters reported. The airline is seeking to convert debt to equity, money from shareholders and Norwegian state guarantees in a bid to survive the coronavirus crisis.

Sweden is witnessing a jump in bankruptcies this month with the rate among hotels and restaurants set to triple to 3.6 from 1.2 per day a year ago, and 3.1 retailers per day going under versus 1.8 per day a year earlier, credit information firm UC said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The rate of bankruptcies in the hotel and restaurant segmentwill probably accelerate further, UC said. UC on April 1 said bankruptcies in the restaurant and hotel sector shot up 123% in March, with the transport sector also seeing a big jump, up 105%.

Swedish fashion retailer MQ will file for bankruptcy on Thursday, the company said, citing plunging sales because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. MQ had already been struggling in the face of a rapid transformation of the retail sector and last month filed for bankruptcy for the smaller of its two brands, Joy, and announced measures to minimise the impact on the group from the coronavirus crisis.

Swiss-based sporting goods group Intersport’s main franchisee in Sweden has filed for a court-led restructuring as it seeks to avert bankruptcy in the face of falling sales because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. Intersport AB, which employs about 2,000 people, said in a statement on Tuesday that it needs temporary relief from creditors to weather the downturn after a sharp decline in sales left it without adequate cash to pay all of its bills. “This is an extraordinary measure ...

Sweden-based airline BRA said on Monday it had applied for court-administered reorganisation as it sought to avoid bankruptcy after the rapidly spreading new coronavirus caused a collapse in demand, Reuters reported. The small privately held airline had said only days ago it was temporarily discontinuing all traffic between April 6 and May 31 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, of which there have been more than 6,000 confirmed cases in Sweden.

Bankruptcies among Swedish restaurants and hotels jumped by 123% in March as measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic stopped people from making trips and socializing, Bloomberg News reported. The transport sector was also hit hard with bankruptcies rising by 105% in March compared to the same month a year ago, according to a statement from the business and credit reference agency UC. The overall number of companies going bust in Sweden last month increased by 9%, it said.

Record numbers of hotels and restaurants went bankrupt in March in Sweden as customers stayed at home to avoid spreading the coronavirus, figures from credit information firm UC showed on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Bankruptcies in the restaurant and hotel sector shot up 123% in March compared with the previous year, with the transport sector also seeing a big jump, up 105%. “In the next stage, this is going to hit banks and real estate firms which will have to negotiate debt write-downs with these firms,” Richard Damberg, economist at UC said in a statement.

A former BHS director pursued over the collapse of the department store group has agreed to a five-year ban on holding similar roles at other organisations, the Financial Times reported. The action against Lennart Henningson completes an investigation by the Insolvency Service into individuals involved in BHS’s failure, the service said in an update on its website. The “statement of unfit conduct” said Mr Henningson did not dispute that while serving as a BHS director he transferred £1.5m from the floundering company to a Swedish subsidiary he controlled.