The coronavirus hit retailers hard, causing businesses to file for bankruptcy across the world. Peter Kaufman, Gordian Group President joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move panel to weigh in on the differences between chapter 7 and chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Head of Macro Strategy at Academy Securities Peter Tchir joins Yahoo Finance’s Seana Smith to break down his outlook on the markets as coronavirus cases surpass 1.5M in the U.S., according to John Hopkins.

L Brands announced its first-quarter results after hours on Wednesday, missing on both top and bottom lines. The company offered no guidance for the next quarter but did solidify that it will follow through on its plans to separate Victoria Secret from Bath and Body works. Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre breaks down the retailers earnings report on The Final Round.

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Victoria’s Secret parent company L Brands reported a 37% drop in sales in its first-quarter earnings report. Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi joins the On The Move panel to discuss how retailers are faring during the virus outbreak.

The global case tally for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 passed 5 million on Thursday after the biggest one-day increase since the start of the outbreak, as a top U.S. scientist cautioned that people should not rely on a vaccine and the labor market continued to show massive job losses.

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Net sales for L Brands, which owns such brands as Bath & Body Works and struggling Victoria’s Secret, were $1.65 billion for the quarter ending May 2, compared to $2.6 billion in the year-ago quarter.

L Brands Inc. shares fell 1% in the extended session Wednesday after the retailer reported a wider-than-expected loss in the first quarter and said it remained "committed" to spinning off its Bath & Body Works business. L Brands said it lost $297 million, or $1.07 a share, in the quarter, versus earnings of $40.3 million, or 14 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted for one-time items, L Brands lost 99 cents a share, versus earnings of 14 cents a share a year ago. Sales fell to $1.7 billion from $2.6 billion a year ago. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected the company to report an adjusted loss of 67 cents a share on sales of $1.8 billion. Nearly all of the company's stores have been closed since March 17 due to the pandemic, the retailer said. The company said it remained on track to establish Bath & Body Works as a pure-play public company and that it was "taking the necessary steps to prepare" its Victoria's Secret lingerie, Victoria's Secret beauty, and Pink businesses to operate as a standalone company. A deal with a private-equity firm fell through earlier this month amid the economic downturn caused by the coronavrius pandemic. L Brands did not provide guidance, pining that lack onto the "high level of uncertainty." Shares of L Brands had ended the regular trading day down 2.3%.

No news is good news for the U.S. stock market, as indexes push higher following Tuesday’s losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has advanced 310.67 points, or 1.3%, while the S&P 500 has risen 1.4%, and the Nasdaq Composite has gained 1.7%. What I don’t yawn at is the fact that the S&P 500 keeps finding ways to make higher highs and lower lows, despite what big daily moves that have a tendency to leave my head spinning.

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A deluge of retail earnings and the Federal Reserve will be in focus in the week ahead.

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- When private equity firm Sycamore Partners walked away from beleaguered lingerie chain Victoria’s Secret, some of the loudest gasps came from India, Asia’s busiest market for distressed assets.Acquirers felt emboldened to seek legal advice. Could they at least renegotiate prices by arguing that the coronavirus was a material adverse change? Also known as MAC, this is an unforeseen event that durably depresses the value of a target company.Judges usually set the bar high for allowing a deal to be killed because of MAC. In the Victoria’s Secret case, Sycamore argued that the clause had been triggered because current owner L Brands Inc. failed to pay rent and furloughed thousands of workers. The pandemic was “no defense” for L Brands violating terms of the agreement, the buyer said in its complaint in the Delaware Chancery Court.In the U.S., Mirae Asset Global Investment Co. is pleading that Anbang Insurance Group Co. breached the terms of its  $5.8 billion hotel chain sale by shuttering properties. That the closures came in response to the outbreak is “irrelevant,” Mirae said in court papers. A unit of Anbang (now known as Dajia Insurance Group) has sued to force the Korean investor to complete the transaction.The MAC risk has come to M&A globally, with 52 publicly filed agreements in the U.S. so far this year excluding pandemics from the definition of material adverse change, the highest in any year, according to Bloomberg Law analyst Grace Maral Burnett. As she explains, a longer list of exclusions typically helps sellers by “limiting the situations in which the acquirer is able to walk away from a deal.”These moves and lawsuits are being watched closely in India. Creditors seeking to recover something from hundreds of billions of dollars of soured corporate loans are nervous. Successful bidders may try to use the pandemic to wriggle out of commitments — or stall payments. Buyers are wary of overpaying for assets whose future earnings potential may have been permanently damaged by Covid-19 and the ensuing lockdowns.For buyout firms, the clock is ticking. They have raised money globally to pick up an interest in the debt of stressed Indian businesses. India’s 2016 bankruptcy law brought them to the country. Long delays in concluding large transactions, like the $5.9 billion sale of Essar Steel India Ltd. to ArcelorMittal, weren’t unexpected, but they did eat into the typical seven-year life of a fund.If wranglings around MAC drag on in tribunals and courts, India’s appeal may fade amid an oversupply of distressed assets everywhere. More than $38 billion in defaulted Indian loans are awaiting resolution, according to an analysis of 245 cases by restructuring services firm Alvarez & Marsal.A yearlong suspension of new bankruptcy filings ranks among the relief measures recently announced by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The logic is easy to see. Even before the pandemic, only one or two bidders were showing up in small in-court bankruptcies. With the economy in a tailspin — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecasts it will shrink an annualized 45% this quarter — the ratio of four liquidations to one corporate rebirth will balloon. A quarter of the workforce is without jobs. A further spike in unemployment could ignite social strife. Yet by acknowledging that the pandemic merits special treatment in bankruptcy, India may have unwittingly shown buyers a way out.So far, there’s only one reported case of an Indian company citing the lockdown to renegotiate a bid, involving the sale of a small auto-parts maker. Large acquirers are hesitant. No one wants to be first to tell creditors they want to pay less: Lenders would seek to get the errant buyer barred from future auctions. The government might not take kindly to such moves, either. State-owned banks are carrying the can of dud loans; the less the buyers put up, the higher the taxpayers’ burden. However, if there’s a barrage of bankruptcy litigation — for instance, around the Covid-19 related debt the government says will be excluded from the definition of default — then those seeking to use MAC to renegotiate or stall may quietly join the slugfest. In light of the pandemic’s extreme impact, “there may be circumstances” in which a court might find a material adverse change occurred when it wouldn’t have under more normal conditions, M&A counsel Gail Weinstein of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP and others wrote in a Harvard Law School article last month.Buyers in India’s distressed market are hoping for just this outcome. Lawyers are tingling with anticipation. Banks are dreading it. And investors who bought defaulted debt are praying that any fresh proceedings will be conducted swiftly, on merit, and won’t end up derailing the bankruptcy gravy train. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services. He previously was a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews. He has also worked for the Straits Times, ET NOW and Bloomberg News.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Stocks poised to bounce back from a lousy finish to Tuesday trading, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped almost 400 points in the final hour of trading to close near the lows of the day, down 1.6%. Shares are down another 5% in premarket trading Wednesday. Futures on the Dow and S&P 500 futures are both about 1.2%, while Nasdaq Composite futures have gained 1.1%.

Reports that China plans a new a national security law for Hong Kong are just the latest sign that relations between the U.S. and China continue to deteriorate.

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L Brands still plans to separate Bath & Body Works into a standalone company, and is closing Victoria’s Secret stores in preparation.

L Brands plans on closing 250 Victoria's Secret stores this year