Banks in the UK are braced for the country’s top financial supervisor to put a stop to £7.5bn of dividend payments due over the next few weeks in a move designed to shore up capital levels during the coronavirus outbreak, the Financial Times reported. The Prudential Regulation Authority, the supervisory arm of the Bank of England, is running out of time to make a decision on whether to block the payments, with Barclays due to pay a full-year dividend of 6p per share on Friday.

EasyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou has lashed out at critics who have questioned his family’s acceptance of a £60m dividend this month from the low-cost carrier he created more than 20 years ago, which he has said risks insolvency unless it cancels a multibillion-dollar aircraft order from Airbus, the Financial Times reported. This weekend Sir Stelios, whose family controls 34 per cent of easyJet, threatened to launch a campaign to oust the group’s non-executive directors one by one if the board did not cancel the orders from the European aerospace manufacturer, which he estim

The U.K. government is loosening its bankruptcy rules to allow struggling businesses to continue trading if they can’t pay their debts because of the impact of the coronavirus. In another sign of how the pandemic is forcing governments to upend policy, Business Secretary Alok Sharma said the changes would allow British companies being reorganized to access supplies and raw materials, and not be placed into administration by creditors. There will also be a clause that temporarily removes the threat of personal liability for company directors during the pandemic.

A dramatic increase in defaults during the next year due to the coronavirus will create a big opportunity for distressed debt investors, according to the world’s biggest publicly listed hedge fund firm, Bloomberg News reported. Money managers at Man Group Plc are intrigued by what they say could be the largest global distressed credit cycle in a generation. It all happened in just a month as the public health crisis rippled through economies all over the world, prompting a sell-off in sovereign and corporate bonds.

British pub chain JD Wetherspoon has suspended payments to its suppliers in the Republic until its pubs reopen after the coronavirus crisis, The Irish Times reported. The company confirmed to The Irish Times that, in line with its UK policy, it has sought a moratorium on payments until its outlets reopen. In an e-mail first reported by UK sustainability website Footprint, the company wrote: “We are asking for a moratorium on payments until the pubs reopen, at which point we intend to clear outstanding payments within a short timeframe.

The U.K. government’s rescue plan for small and medium sized companies may be only three days old, but there’s growing concern it won’t be able to stave off a wave of bankruptcies in the world’s fifth-largest economy, Bloomberg News reported. On Wednesday, a chorus of voices ranging from lawmakers to small business trade groups said the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, or CBILS, is too reliant on commercial banks and their traditional underwriting methods to rapidly deliver cash to desperate companies.

The administrators of a shipbuilding company bought by the Scottish government are owed £1.2 million, The Times reported. A report by Deloitte shows the costs charged for its staff working on the insolvency of Ferguson Marine Engineering between August and February. Ferguson went into administration in the summer after a long dispute between it and Caledonian Maritime Assets over a £97 million contract to build two new ferries for the islands.

The IoD is calling for emergency insolvency measures to prevent widespread company collapses, Business News Wales reported. Under current laws, the board of directors has a strict duty to cease trading if the company is facing insolvency, and may face personal financial or legal liabilities at a later date if they seek finance instead of doing so. The IoD therefore calls on the Government to relax existing insolvency obligations – including a moratorium on the current offence of wrongful trading.

The UK government is eyeing urgent changes to insolvency laws to prevent companies unable to meet debts due to the impact of coronavirus from being forced to file for bankruptcy, the Financial Times reported. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy canvassed insolvency and restructuring experts this week on a possible suspension of wrongful trading laws and new measures to protect retail and hospitality groups forced to stop trading because of the government’s nationwide lockdown, according to two people familiar with the matter.

UK small lenders are warning that hundreds of thousands of vulnerable customers could become “mortgage prisoners” if the government does not grant wider access to emergency funding schemes to support credit during the coronavirus pandemic, the Financial Times reported. Non-bank, specialist lenders play a key role in providing home loans to three quarters of a million people who cannot borrow from mainstream banks, as well as financing small businesses and providing consumer finance such as point-of-sale credit.