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The International Monetary Fund on Monday kicked off down the long road emerging market debt relief, giving six months’ waiver to 25 of its poorest members as calls grow for private sector involvement in the exercise.

The International Monetary Fund has doubled its emergency financial package for emerging and developing countries hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, its managing director said on Thursday, as she warned that the global economy would suffer its worst slump since the Great Depression.

The Single Resolution Board will take what it describes as a "forward looking" approach with banks that might struggle to meet their minimum requirements for own funds and eligible liabilities (MREL), though it will also be sticking to its original deadlines for these targets.

Official financial lifelines to keep UK companies alive through the coronavirus pandemic are already having a tangible effect. Shares in Redrow, the UK housebuilder, rose 7.5% on Thursday morning after it announced it had been approved to borrow up to £300m from the Bank of England’s commercial paper facility for investment grade companies.

Centerview Partners has appointed ex-Lazard rainmaker Matthieu Pigasse as head of its new French operation, as the boutique advisory firm expands in continental Europe with a 15-strong team.

Bondholders appear to be sleepwalking over the precipice of a debt standstill chasm as the fissure of the emerging markets funding crisis yawns wider by the day. The IMF and World Bank have called for a suspension of debt payments to official and private creditors but there is scant evidence that the latter are alive to that possibility becoming a reality. Ross Lancaster, Phil Thornton and Oliver West report.

The Eurogroup has, once again, manifestly failed to come to a unanimous position on coronabonds. The bloc does appear to be incrementally adding components to its joint fiscal response, however, with some form of joint recovery fund appearing likely — even if the source of its funding remains a mystery. Jean Comte, Jasper Cox and Lewis McLellan report.

Finance professionals may be at greater risk of breaching conduct rules in areas like confidentiality and recording phone calls because they are working from home.

Market participants are expecting a gigantic take-up in the next round of the European Central Bank's Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTRO III), after the central bank said that it would accept a much broader range of assets as collateral in the scheme. Smaller banks are likely to be among the biggest winners, with the new criteria helping them to look after their liquidity coverage ratios.

European banks are struggling to decide how to strike the right tone when reporting their first quarter results this year amid the extreme uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. Despite guidance from regulators, their biggest difficulty will be in signalling their expectations for loan losses.

Equity markets welcomed new measures from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to ease requirements for companies seeking to raise capital to ride out the economic havoc of the Covid-19 pandemic. The most important change is giving companies more flexibility on their 12-month working capital statements, which are required for preparing a prospectus.

Finance ministers have agreed on the use of the European Stability Mechanism, the European Investment Bank and a new unemployment fund as a fiscal response to the coronavirus crisis, but they remain split on language about a possible common recovery fund. They are set to reconvene — virtually — on Thursday afternoon.