Profit halved at the Royal Bank of Scotland during a troubled first three months of the year for the banking industry as coronavirus shut down large parts of the global economy.

The bank said that operating profit before tax reached £519 million, ahead of the £415 million that analysts had expected.

The 49% drop from the same period last year came after the business took a net impairment loss of £802 million. RBS said that £628 million of this was down to the uncertain economic outlook.

Analysts had expected impairments of around £515 million.

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"Every person, family and business has been affected by the current situation and normal business activity has been severely impacted, said chief executive Alison Rose.

"We are putting our purpose into action and I am proud of how we have responded, providing our customers, communities and colleagues with the support they need."

RBS, which also owns NatWest, has managed to keep nine in 10 branches open, even while sending about 60,000 members of staff to work from home.

The bank has approved more than 8,000 loans, worth £1.5 billion, to small firms under the Government's coronavirus business interruption loan scheme, designed to help companies through the crisis.

In the run-up to the crisis, many of its business customers were being prudent, setting aside more cash than usual.

Business deposits increased by around £8.9 billion, compared to the last quarter of 2019, RBS said.

The bank said it would be "inappropriate" to provide the markets with a medium-term outlook as the economy faces "unprecedented levels of uncertainty".

Ms Rose added: "Although the outlook remains extremely uncertain, we approach the crisis from a position of strength, with confidence in our balance sheet and focus on our strategic priorities."

The results come a month after RBS announced it would not pay out a dividend to shareholders, after a request from the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority to all the banks.

Up to 3,000 jobs across pilots and cabin crew are to be cut at Ryanair.

The budget airline group announced that a restructuring programme could also involve unpaid leave and pay being slashed by up to 20%, as well as the closure of "a number of aircraft bases across Europe" until demand for air travel recovers.

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Chief executive Michael O'Leary, whose pay was cut by 50% for April and May, has agreed to extend the reduction for the remainder of the financial year to March 2021.

Ryanair said its flights will remain grounded until "at least July" and passenger numbers will not return to 2019 levels "until summer 2022 at the earliest".

Brian Strutton, general secretary of pilots' union Balpa, said: "There has been no warning or consultation by Ryanair about the 3,000 potential job losses and this is miserable news for pilots and staff who have taken pay cuts under the Government job retention scheme.

"Ryanair seems to have done a U-turn on its ability to weather the Covid storm.
"Aviation workers are now facing a tsunami of job losses. The UK Government has to stop daydreaming and keep to the promise made by the Chancellor on 17 March to help airlines, or this industry - vital to the UK economy - will be devastated."

Ryanair expects to operate fewer than 1% of its scheduled flights between April and June, and carry no more than half of its original target of 44.6 million passengers between July and September.

For the 12 months to the end of March 2021, its forecast is that it will carry fewer than 100 million passengers. Its target for the period was 154 million.

The airline group said it is in "active negotiations" with Boeing to cut the number of planned aircraft deliveries over the next 24 months.

It expects to report a net loss of more than €100 million (£87 million) between April and May, with "further losses" in the following three months.

Airlines around the world are facing a struggle to survive due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday it was announced that up to 12,000 British Airways workers will lose their jobs, which is more than one in four employees.

Sir Richard Branson has warned that Virgin Atlantic will collapse unless it receives Government support.

The average house price topped £220,000 for the first time in April, according to an index, despite the market now effectively being on hold.

Across the UK, the average property value reached a record high in cash terms, standing at £222,915, Nationwide Building Society said.

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Property values were up by 3.7% year on-year - the fastest pace of annual growth since February 2017.

House prices were also up by 0.7% month on month - the seventh monthly increase in a row.

The average property value was tipped over the £220,000 threshold for the first time in the index, having stood at £219,583 in March.

Nationwide emphasised that the impact of the coronavirus pandemic is not fully captured in the April figures. This is because its index uses mortgage approval data - and there is a time lag between mortgage applications being submitted and approved.

It estimates that around 80% of cases in April relate to mortgage applications that were started before the lockdown on March 23, before the full extent of the impact of the pandemic became clear.

The Government is currently advising people who had been on the brink of moving home to do all they can to amicably agree moving at a later date, when stay-at-home measures to limit the spread of coronavirus are no longer in place.

Lenders are allowing extensions their mortgage offers to enable movers to take a pause.
Robert Gardner, Nationwide's chief economist, said: "In the opening months of 2020, before the pandemic struck the UK, the housing market had been steadily gathering momentum.

"Activity levels and price growth were edging up thanks to continued robust labour market conditions, low borrowing costs and a more stable political backdrop following the general election.

"But housing market activity is now grinding to a halt as a result of the measures implemented to control the spread of the virus, and where the Government has recommended not entering into housing transactions during this period.

"Indeed, a lack of transactions will make gauging house price trends difficult in the coming months. Our ability to produce the index in the months ahead will depend on there being sufficient transactions which are representative of the wider housing market."