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Illinois moved up its $1.26 billion bond sale by one day and cut the yields being offered to investors, a sign of strong demand as President Joe Biden’s economic relief package promises to ease the fiscal strain on the lowest-rated U.S. state, Bloomberg News reported. The tax-exempt sale had been expected to price Wednesday but was closed ahead of schedule by Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter. The yields on an $850 million portion of the securities ranged from 0.69% for those due in 2022 to 2.81% on 2041 bonds, down from the 0.81% to 3% initially offered, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The yields on bonds due in 2024 were 1.09%, about one-third of the 3.42% Illinois paid when it borrowed $2 billion from the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending facility in December.

Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. are postponing planned credit-card fee increases that were set to kick in this year after the plans drew criticism from lawmakers. Citing the continuing effects of the coronavirus pandemic on businesses, Visa and Mastercard said they will hold off on increasing interchange fees for merchants until next April, the Wall Street Journal reported. Visa and Mastercard plans included raising interchange fees for many online purchases by around 0.05 to 0.10 of a percentage point, according to a document reviewed by the Journal. Those changes would have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in additional interchange fee charges for merchants within the span of a year, according to estimates from CMSPI, a merchants’ payments consulting firm. The planned fee increases prompted Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) to send a letter this month to the chief executive officers of Visa and Mastercard calling on the companies to refrain from moving forward with the increases, citing the pandemic’s effect on businesses.

Government relief programs and lenders’ forbearance have kept U.S. small businesses from defaulting on their debt en masse as revenue slumped during the pandemic crisis, according to a new analysis provided to Bloomberg News. Among small firms nationwide, 18.3% of business payments were past due in January, a modest increase from 17.7% in February 2020, the Urban Institute said in a report using Dun & Bradstreet data. Somewhat more affected were two big cities on the coasts, New York and San Francisco, which saw increases of 2.5 and 4.3 percentage points, respectively. For now, businesses are sitting on enough cash to pay their bills. Cash balances were up as much as 41% at their peak in late August, as the federal Paycheck Protection Program pumped out forgivable loans to keep small firms afloat. Those balances were still up by 35% through late September, according to data from the JPMorgan Chase Institute. Meantime, business owners have cut their expenses, often by slashing payrolls, and many lenders and landlords have been lenient with rent and other bills. Despite the relatively strong credit metrics, the future remains uncertain for a sector that employed almost half the country’s private workforce and was a growth engine of the economy before Covid-19 hit. “Shrinking payroll, reducing physical space, and other accommodations are painful for small businesses and may constrain their ability to grow,” the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research group, said in its report. “It’s also unclear what will happen when creditors cease to offer flexibility for businesses on repayment of their built-up amounts owed.”

Seadrill plans to lay off 162 workers after the U.K.-based offshore driller couldn’t secure a new contract for one of its drillships, the Houston Chronicle reported. The company’s Houston office informed Mayor Sylvester Turner and the Texas Workforce Commission last month that workers on its West Neptune drillship in the Gulf of Mexico would be laid off in the coming months after the contract ends. Layoffs began this month and will be completed by the end of May, Seadrill said. “The West Neptune will soon complete operations under its current contract and is anticipated to be cold stacked (mothballed),” Seadrill said in a Feb. 8 letter, which was made public Monday. “The inability to secure additional work for the West Neptune in the face of the current market and other conditions is sudden (and) unexpected, and outside of Seadrill’s control.” Oil exploration and production companies have been hammered by the coronavirus-driven oil bust, which has plunged demand for petroleum products such as gasoline and jet fuel. Offshore drillers, in particular, have been hardest hit as crude from deep-water wells is among the most expensive to produce, requiring large upfront capital and a longer return on investment. Seadrill and some of its subsidiaries filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy last month in the Southern District of Texas, its second in four years. The company reported a $4.7 billion loss in 2020, and has $6.2 billion of debt coming due within this year.

In the year since the pandemic upended the economy, more than four million people have quit the labor force. They are not counted in the most commonly cited unemployment rate, which stood at 6.2 percent in February, making the group something of a hidden casualty of the pandemic, the New York Times reported. For the legion of older workers who hope to return to work after the pandemic, a challenging path may lie ahead. Studies show that older people who leave the work force will have a more difficult time re-entering it because of age discrimination and other reasons. If that reality holds during the recovery, the number of older workers who have left the labor force — either because they could not find a job or because they retired early — could be one of the pandemic’s enduring consequences. One prevailing question is whether employers, as in the past, will look askance at those who have been out of the labor force for a significant time. Even in a tight labor market, long-term unemployed workers faced a stigma, said Maria Heidkamp, the director of the New Start Career Network, which helps older job seekers in New Jersey. Still, many economists believe that the extraordinary number of people who have left the labor force will be more of a temporary blip than emblematic of a deeper structural issue. They expect that many who have left the labor force in the last year will return to work once health concerns and child care issues are alleviated. And they are optimistic that as the labor market heats up, it will draw in workers who grew disenchanted with the job search.

U.S. airline executives yesterday pointed to concrete signs of a domestic leisure travel recovery as a slowing pandemic drives spring and summer bookings, pushing shares to their highest level since the coronavirus crisis hit the sector a year ago, Reuters reported. “We certainly are seeing the beginning of what feels like a very large uptick,” said American Airlines Chief Executive Doug Parker, one of several CEOs speaking at a J.P. Morgan conference. Ted Christie, CEO of budget carrier Spirit Airlines, said the recovery appeared to “have legs.” Executives cited data showing that U.S. COVID-19 vaccinations are accelerating and have outstripped the number of positive cases, which are on the decline. Airline shares started dropping dramatically on Feb 21, 2020, as the pandemic spread, reaching a low on May 14 and gradually increasing since then to the current high. United Airlines expects to halt its cash burn in March, CEO Scott Kirby said, the first major carrier to say it could hit the industry’s milestone. In January, United said an average daily core cash burn of $19 million in the fourth quarter would likely continue in the beginning of 2021.

Cicis pizza buffet announced that it has successfully emerged from chapter 11 protection, FoxBusiness.com reported. The company has reorganized its corporate team, company operations and financial structure alongside an acquisition by D&G Investors. Cicis confirmed that it had entered into an agreement to sell itself to D&G Investors in early February. The growing popularity of food delivery has been a problem for Cici’s, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many diners across the country to stay home. The chain has relied primarily on an in-person, all-you-can-eat buffet model, the company said in a court filing, according to the report. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, dine-in customers accounted for 86% of Cici’s business. 

HighPoint Resources Corp. filed for bankruptcy, setting in train a process that will result in the Denver-based shale oil producer being acquired by Bonanza Creek Energy Inc., Bloomberg News reported. The driller filed a chapter 11 petition in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, indicating its estimated liabilities to be up to $1 billion. Yesterday’s filing comes two days after shareholders of HighPoint and Bonanza approved plans for the companies to merge as part of a prepackaged debt restructuring agreement. Bonanza’s stock tumbled 12% last week, paring its gains this year to 81%. HighPoint operates in the Denver-Julesburg Basin of Colorado and Wyoming, a shale play that has seen more than three-quarters of its drilling rigs idled, according to Baker Hughes Co. Deutsche Bank AG was listed as HighPoint’s largest creditor with claims unsecured by collateral of $641 million.