Marks & Spencer has said it expects its clothing and home arm to be "severely constrained" during the coronavirus lockdown and as it faces the prospect of a phased lifting of restrictions.

It added that trading in its food business has also been knocked by the closure of cafes and wider lockdown impacting travel and city centre sites.

The high street chain has secured fresh funding to bolster its balance sheet in the face of the woes, while it is also axing costs and said it was likely to cut its dividend for 2020-21.

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M&S plans to give more details of the cost actions and said it will unveil how it will change ways of working "permanently" under a ramped-up overhaul, dubbed "never the same again".

M&S said: "We are planning for the clothing & home business to be severely constrained during lockdown and highly uncertain trading conditions in a prolonged exit period.

"In the absence of a clear basis for forecasting, our scenario planning and stress tests are based on materially subdued trading for the balance of 2020 in clothing & home."

It said formal agreement has been reached with the lending syndicate of banks providing the £1.1bn revolving credit facility to substantially relax or remove covenant conditions.

It added: "As part of the planning for these measures and in order to provide for the uncertain outlook the board does not at this stage anticipate paying a dividend for the 2020/21 financial year, generating a cash saving of £210m."

BP beat expectations in what was nevertheless a tough quarter when oil prices collapsed.

The oil giant's underlying replacement cost profit, the most closely watched figure, hit 800 million US dollars (£644 million), against expectations it would only reach 710 million dollars (£572 million).

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Executives said they faced a challenging period when demand was being destroyed, as the coronavirus rips through the economy. Oil prices have dropped from around 64 US dollars per barrel of Brent crude at the start of January, to 19 dollars on Tuesday morning.

Chief executive Bernard Looney said: "Our industry has been hit by supply and demand shocks on a scale never seen before, but that is no excuse to turn inward. BP, like many other companies, is stepping up and extending a helping hand to those in need. We do it not because it is expected of us - but because we want to. That is consistent with our purpose."

He added: "We are taking decisive actions to strengthen our finances - reinforcing liquidity, rapidly reducing spending and costs, driving our cash balance point lower.

"We are determined to perform with purpose and remain committed to delivering our net-zero ambition."

Banking giant HSBC has put its mammoth redundancy programme on ice as it revealed first-quarter profits almost halved due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The group said it was putting the "wellbeing" of its staff first during the crisis and pausing plans to axe 35,000 jobs globally.

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It reported a 48% slump in pre-tax profits to 3.2 billion US dollars (£2.6 billion) for the first three months of 2020.

The group's profits were slashed as it set aside 3 billion US dollars (£2.4 billion) for bad loans, up 417% on a year earlier, as the coronavirus crisis and oil price crash hammers the global economy.

Noel Quinn, group chief executive, said: "The economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on our customers has been the main driver of the change in our financial performance since the turn of the year.

"The resultant increase in expected credit losses in the first quarter contributed to a material fall in reported profit before tax compared with the same period last year."

He added: "I take the wellbeing of our people extremely seriously.

"We have therefore paused the vast majority of redundancies related to the transformation we announced in February to reduce the uncertainty they are facing at this difficult time."