Up to 1,100 jobs are at risk at Pizza Express's restaurants in the UK as it plans to close around 67 of its sites.

The chain said it is planning to launch a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) in the "near future" in a bid to push down its rents amid a "significantly more challenging environment" after the coronavirus pandemic.

The outcome has "yet to be decided", Pizza Express said, but it may end in the closure of around 15% of its 449 restaurants in the UK, affecting 1,100 staff.

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The company added: "This decision is a very difficult one; however, against the current unprecedented backdrop, Pizza Express believes reducing the size of its estate will help it to protect 9,000 jobs."

The company closed all its UK restaurants on March 23 after the Government-mandated lockdown.

Andy Pellington, group chief finance officer, said: "While we have had to make some very difficult decisions, none of which has been taken lightly, we are confident in the actions being taken to reduce the level of debt, create a more focused business and improve the operational performance, all of which puts us in a much stronger position.

"We can now plan to invest in both our UK&I and international businesses as well as support our teams as they return to work."

Zoe Bowley, UK and Ireland managing director, said: "Our business has a long history of success, but the UK-wide lockdown has hit the hospitality industry particularly hard.

"While the financial restructuring is a positive step forward, at the same time we have had to make some really tough decisions.

"As a result, it is with a heavy heart that we expect to permanently close a proportion of our restaurants, losing valued team members in the process."

Oil giant BP slashed its dividend in half as it swung to a multi-billion dollar loss in the second quarter of the year as the Covid-19 pandemic pushed down oil prices.

The payout was cut from 10.25 US cents (7.84p) to 5.23 US cents (4p), the oil company said on Tuesday.

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Underlying replacement cost loss hit 6.68 billion US dollars (£5.1 billion), slightly better than the 6.8 billion dollars (£5.2 billion) that analysts had predicted.

It is a drop from 2.8 billion dollars (£2.1 billion) this time last year as the price of oil fell by more than half over the period.

BP chief executive Bernard Looney said: "These headline results have been driven by another very challenging quarter, but also by the deliberate steps we have taken as we continue to reimagine energy and reinvent BP.

"In particular, our reset of long-term price assumptions and the related impairment and exploration write-off charges had a major impact.

"Beneath these, however, our performance remained resilient, with good cash flow and - most importantly - safe and reliable operations."

EasyJet has said it is operating more flights than previously planned due to demand exceeding expectations.

The airline is expanding its schedule to 40% of normal capacity between July and September, compared with the 30% it predicted in June.

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In the three months to the end of June, the budget carrier made just £7 million in revenue after the company's fleet was grounded from March 30 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

It started flying again in the middle of June and carried 117,000 passengers in the 132,000 seats it had available in the last two weeks of the quarter, easyJet said.

Johan Lundgren, easyJet chief executive, said: "Returning to the skies again allows us to do what we do best and take our customers on much-needed holidays.

"I am extremely proud of all of our people whose care and commitment, along with the introduction of our industry-leading biosecurity measures, have resulted in customer satisfaction scores reaching a high of 80% since the re-start, an increase of 13 percentage points compared to the same period last year.

"I am really encouraged that we have seen higher than expected levels of demand with load factor of 84% in July with destinations like Faro and Nice remaining popular with customers.

"Our bookings for the remainder of the summer are performing better than expected and as a result, we have decided to expand our schedule over the fourth quarter to fly circa 40% of capacity.

"This increased flying will allow us to connect even more customers to family or friends and to take the breaks they have worked hard for."

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