Friday newspaper round-up: Arcadia, retailers, P&O Ferries

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has banned banks from requesting personal guarantees for emergency loans to small businesses amid growing government concern that lenders have been slow in meeting demands for help. With the rapid increase in the number of universal credit claims suggesting many small companies have already collapsed since the economy was locked down, Sunak combined a new package of support for business with a warning to banks that they had to move more quickly. - Guardian

The billionaire retailer Philip Green is asking for taxpayer help to prop up his crumbling fashion empire, with 14,500 employees set to be paid out of the government’s emergency wage support scheme. Like other fashion retailers, Arcadia, which owns brands including Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge, is facing financial turmoil as the lockdown prevents Britons from shopping. The company has already asked landlords for rent cuts and paused payments into its pension scheme. – Guardian

Human life is valuable. Massive uncertainties still exist about the prevalence and deadliness of Covid-19. The lion’s share of the economic costs of disruption should be temporary, dissipating over a two-to-three year period. All three best-guess assumptions suggest we should be willing to bear significant near-term economic pain to avoid the excess deaths seen in Italy as its health system became overwhelmed. – Telegraph

High street retailers suffered their worst fall in sales for at least 12 years in March, figures from BDO, the accountancy and business advisory firm, show. In-store sales fell 34.1 per cent on March last year while in-store and non-store combined, which includes online, fell 17.9 per cent, according to the latest high street sales tracker from BDO. – The Times

P&O Ferries has asked the government for a £150 million bailout after plunging into a cash crisis after demand from passengers all but dried up. The company that operates on Britain’s key import-export crossing between Dover and Calais runs on a business model, which means its 8.4 million passengers a year subsidise its income from freight lorries. – The Times