UK fitness retailer and gym group DW Sports warned it was on the brink of administration, with 1,700 jobs at risk, after the coronavirus lockdown wiped out its income, the Financial Times reported. The company, which is owned by former footballer Dave Whelan, said on Monday that it was hoping to save “as many gyms as possible” and protect jobs — but that its 75 stores across the UK would permanently close. Martin Long, the company’s chief executive, said the forced closure of the group’s stores and gym chain during lockdown had left it with “a high fixed-cost base and zero income”.

HSBC Holdings PLC warned its bad debt charges could blow past a previous estimate to $13 billion this year and said its profits more than halved, as the coronavirus pandemic hammered the bank’s retail and corporate customers worldwide, Reuters reported. The lender warned its capital reserves could deteriorate, its revenues would come under pressure and it faced heightened geopolitical risk as Europe’s biggest bank set out a gloomier than expected outlook for the second half of the year.

NatWest became the latest in a string of British banks to report a sharp jump in provisions to absorb an expected surge in bad debts due to the worsening outlook for the UK economy, the Financial Times reported. The company, formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland, reported a £2.1bn impairment charge for the second quarter, more than twice the size of its first-quarter provision. NatWest’s impairment charge pushed it to a £1.3bn pre-tax loss for the three months to June, compared with a £1.7bn profit in the same period last year.

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.

Noble Corp., the offshore drilling contractor, filed for bankruptcy with a plan to cut more than $3.4 billion of debt after a crash in crude prices made undersea oil wells too expensive, Bloomberg News reported. The Chapter 11 filing in Texas would eliminate all of the company’s bond borrowings by swapping debt for equity, the company said in a statement. Noteholders agreed to invest $200 million of new capital through second-lien notes, and Noble has lined up a $675 million secured revolving credit facility backed by current lenders including JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The end of the government’s furlough scheme in October looms large for all of UK business. For retail and hospitality companies, another deadline is just as chilling: the end of the one-year “holiday” on business rates next March, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Since rates are linked to rental values dating from 2015 — and a revaluation has just been postponed — shop chains could snap back into paying a hefty levy based on rents calculated long before Covid-19 devastated their businesses.

Lloyds Banking Group is preparing for a surge in customer defaults, after Britain’s largest retail bank warned that the coronavirus crisis had inflicted more damage on the economy than it had expected, the Financial Times reported. The bank’s shares tumbled more than 7 per cent on Thursday to their lowest level in eight years after the lender set aside another £2.4bn to cover future bad loans and slumped to a second-quarter loss.

Barclays set aside a higher than expected 1.6 billion pounds to cover a possible rise in loan losses in the second quarter and warned a grim outlook and low interest rates would hurt profits into 2021, Reuters reported. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced banks globally to set aside billions to cover bad loans and the British bank’s consumer business is under pressure from lower interest rates, smaller credit card balances and personal loan repayment holidays.

Santander slumped to an €11.1bn loss in the second quarter after the coronavirus pandemic forced the eurozone’s largest retail bank to take large writedowns on the value of several of its businesses, led by its UK arm, the Financial Times reported. This marked the first loss in the Spanish lender’s 163-year history and came after it wrote off €6.1bn of goodwill left over from the purchases that created Santander UK in the 2000s.

Virgin Money has reported a sharp increase in provisions for defaults on mortgage loans, as fears grow about the impact the coronavirus pandemic will have on UK unemployment levels, the Financial Times reported. The UK’s sixth-largest bank said it had yet to see many specific credit losses across its loanbook due to forbearance measures such as loan holidays and free overdrafts, but topped up its provisions for potential future losses by £42m to reflect a weaker economic outlook.