Petra Diamonds, owner of the South African mine famous for producing two of the diamonds in the British crown jewels, has put itself up for sale as it battles to service its debts, the Financial Times reported. The London-listed miner, which has been in talks with creditors after the coronavirus pandemic hammered the diamond market, said it was seeking offers for all or part of the company that owns the Cullinan mine.

However much Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he will be able to arrange a trade deal with the European Union by the year-end, firms in Britain are already bracing themselves for the possibility he won’t, Bloomberg News reported. Renold Plc, a Manchester-based maker of vehicle chains and gearboxes, is among them. It’s planning to fast-track deliveries to customers in the coming months to ensure they aren’t caught up in any potential border disruption due to Brexit in January, according to Chief Executive Officer Robert Purcell.

UK shopping centre owner Intu has entered administration, becoming the latest casualty of a coronavirus pandemic that has inflicted severe pain on the country’s struggling retail sector, the Financial Times reported. The company, whose malls include the Trafford Centre in Manchester and Lakeside in Essex, had sought breathing space on its debts from lenders but said in a statement on Friday that “insufficient alignment and agreement has been achieved on such terms”. KPMG has been appointed to oversee the administration.

Non-Standard Finance on Thursday raised doubts on its ability to continue as a going concern, with the coronavirus crisis halting lending and making matters worse for the British lender that was just coming off a failed attempt to buy rival Provident Financial Plc, Reuters reported. “The last 18 months have been difficult and disappointing for Non-Standard Finance with the failure of our offer for Provident Financial,” Chief Executive Officer John van Kuffeler said, adding that the COVID-19 pandemic led to large write-downs in the company’s businesses.

McLaren is worried it may soon run out of money. Although the famous British team has signed up Daniel Ricciardo for 2021, McLaren has now said in a filing at London's High Court that it needs a ruling "to ensure that the Group can continue as a going concern into 2021,” Grandprix.com reported. The company has already laid off a quarter of its workforce, and now it is suing to have the security in its factory and historic F1 car collection released in order to raise over $300 million in loans.

The UK accounting watchdog is set to announce an investigation into the three auditors of collapsed investment business London Capital & Finance, according to people familiar with the situation, the Financial Times reported. Big Four accountants EY and PwC, as well as Oliver Clive & Co, a small London-based firm, each signed off LCF’s books for three years before it went into administration in January 2019, in a high-profile scandal related to the mis-selling of mini-bonds.

More than £28bn has been lent to the UK’s smallest companies to help them through the coronavirus pandemic, with the number of state-backed “bounce back” loans continuing to rise sharply despite the easing of lockdown restrictions, the Financial Times reported. The Treasury on Tuesday said that almost £2bn of these light-touch loans had been taken by so-called micro businesses in the past week alone, with the total number of businesses that have used the business bailout scheme standing at more than 921,000.

JD Sports on Tuesday appointed Deloitte as administrator for its loss-making outdoor clothing chain as it bought back assets of the unit in a pre-pack administration deal, Reuters reported. Go Outdoors, which JD first bought for 112 million pounds ($140.19 million) four years ago, has struggled with significant losses as sales declined at its 67 stores, and JD had been exploring options for the division while the coronavirus lockdown mounted further pressure.

Intu Properties’ attempts to stave off administration are set to go down to the wire, with the heavily indebted UK shopping centre owner locked in tense negotiations with its lenders ahead of a Friday deadline, the Financial Times reported. The company is negotiating a standstill agreement which would allow it to pause debt repayments for at least a year. If an agreement is not reached, KPMG has been appointed to plan for administration. Discussions were “finely balanced” and there was “no certainty as to whether Intu will achieve a standstill”, said the company.

Two months after its dire predictions of the steepest recession in almost a century, the International Monetary Fund will release new global economic forecasts this week that will probably look even worse, Bloomberg News reported. Officials at the Washington-based Fund have warned that a revised outlook due on Wednesday may feature a more pessimistic view than in April. Back then, they said the “Great Lockdown” caused by the coronavirus would force a global contraction of 3% this year.