The number of soured U.K. commercial property loans started rising in 2019 for the first time in eight years. Now, it’s set to skyrocket. The coronavirus outbreak will trigger as much as 10 billion pounds ($12.3 billion) of losses and write-offs on loans tied to U.K. stores and malls, according to a survey of lenders by Cass Business School. That’s after a slump in retail property saw the value of bad loans spike by more than a third last year, though to a still relatively low 2.9 billion pounds.

The collapse of Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd. after the briefest of fights indicates the world’s weakest airlines have little time to secure funds before they succumb to the coronavirus, Bloomberg News reported. The debt-laden carrier became the outbreak’s biggest airline scalp when it handed control to administrators on Tuesday. A near-halt in passenger revenue overwhelmed the Brisbane-based company in less than two months. “We should get used to news of this kind,” said Volodymyr Bilotkach, a lecturer in air-transport management at the Singapore Institute of Technology.

Offshore oil driller Valaris PLC is preparing to start talks with creditors to see if they can agree on terms for a possible bankruptcy filing, as it grapples with a $6.5 billion debt burden and an unprecedented plunge in U.S. crude prices, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. Reuters reported last month that the London-based company was working with debt restructuring advisers as it struggled to cope with a rig accident and falling energy prices, Reuters reported. Since then, U.S.

The UK arm of the Belgian-owned bakery chain Le Pain Quotidien is at risk of falling into administration within days, putting 500 jobs under threat unless a buyer is found this week, the Financial Times reported. The restructuring experts Alvarez & Marsal are running an emergency sale of the 26-site café business with the deadline for bids on Wednesday, according to people with knowledge of the process. If no buyer is found during the sale process, known as Project Sunburst according to one person, administrators will be appointed.

The number of British companies ceasing trading jumped in March in a potential early sign of the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the country’s economy, according to academic research published on Monday, Reuters reported. Analysis from the Enterprise Research Centre - led by staff at the University of Warwick and Aston University in central England - showed a 70% jump in company dissolutions to just over 21,000 in March 2020 compared with the same month a year before. Compared with February, the increase was just over 19%.

Emerging markets fund manager Ashmore lost more than a fifth of its assets in the first quarter as the coronavirus crisis sent stocks and bonds in the developing world into free fall, the Financial Times reported. London-based Ashmore said its assets under management reached $76.8bn at the end of March, down from $98.4bn at the end of 2019. In a trading update on Thursday, it said that the falling value of its investments accounted for $18bn of the loss, while investors withdrew another $3.6bn from Ashmore’s funds.

Supermarket chain Tesco is among those that have expressed an interest in Carluccio’s sites and other assets after the Italian chain collapsed into administration last month, the Financial Times reported. FRP Advisory, the insolvency specialist running the sale process, has received offers for Carluccio’s locations from Tesco, Boparan Holdings, the company behind the Giraffe and Ed’s Easy Diner chains, and Three Hills Capital, owner of the burger brand Byron, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations.

More than 15,000 U.K. companies fell into “significant distress” in the first three months of 2020 as the virus shutdown took its toll on the economy, according to a quarterly survey published on Friday by insolvency specialist Begbies Traynor, Bloomberg News reported. That’s the highest tally ever recorded by the survey and the largest quarterly increase since the end of 2017, bringing the total number of British companies falling behind on debts of up to 5,000 pounds ($6,220) to more than half a million.

Dozens of UK retailers and restaurant chains are in talks to take advantage of an experimental “light touch” administration that is intended to protect companies from creditors during the coronavirus pandemic, the Financial Times reported. Department store chain Debenhams, which has 142 stores and more than £1bn of annual sales, last week became the first high-street business to enter into such a process.

British fashion brands Oasis and Warehouse have fallen into administration, threatening over 2,000 jobs and joining a growing list of store groups pushed over the edge by the coronavirus crisis, Reuters reported. Deloitte, appointed as administrator to the Oasis Warehouse group owned by Icelandic bank Kaupthing on Wednesday, said that 202 of the retailers’ employees would be made redundant, 1,801 furloughed and 41 head office staff retained. The brands trade from 92 branches across the Oasis Warehouse group’s leasehold stores, with 437 concessions located in third party retailers.