Good morning. The coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc on businesses and the economy. Companies are closing stores to stem the spread of the virus and finance chiefs are considering layoffs to reduce overhead. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve slashed its benchmark interest rate to near zero on Sunday and said it would buy $700 billion in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities in an aggressive bid to prevent market disruptions.

“The coronavirus outbreak has harmed communities and disrupted economic activity in many countries, including the United States,” the Fed’s rate-setting committee said in a statement Sunday. “The Federal Reserve is prepared to use its full range of tools to support the flow of credit to households and businesses.”

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Other central banks took action today, with the Bank of Japan beefing up its stimulus and the Bank of Korea cutting rates to a record low. Financial markets still plummeted. 

Purges of American workers could become unavoidable in some industries such as shipping, air travel, retailing and dining as demand slows. The U.S. economic outlook hangs in large part on whether business leaders respond to the crisis with layoffs, as they have with many past shocks.

U.S. retailers from Abercrombie & Fitch to Urban Outfitters and Nike are making unprecedented moves to close hundreds of stores across the country. Grocers and other chains that sell foods, medicines and household essentials have promised to stay open and restock as people race to fill pantries and refrigerators. Walmart and grocers Kroger and Publix said they will limit overnight hours for cleanings and restocking shelves.

The pain is acute at companies with high levels of debt or that were struggling before the outbreak. Already, shale oil driller Occidental Petroleum, laden with debt from its $38 billion purchase last year of a rival, has slashed its dividend and spending plans. Boeing, wounded by the grounding of its 737 Max jet, has frozen its hiring and maxed out its credit lines. The outbreak is also likely to be particularly challenging for small companies because they tend to operate on thinner margins and with smaller cash reserves.

Arco Platform Ltd., Coupa Software Inc., and Healthequity Inc. are among the companies scheduled to report earnings today.

On Tuesday, the U.S. retail sales report for February will show how household spending was holding up before coronavirus started to have much of an impact on consumer sentiment or behavior. Also Tuesday, U.S. industrial production data for February will show if the sector remained on shaky ground just as supply chains started to feel the effects of the virus.

The National Association of Realtors on Friday releases the February report on U.S. existing-home sales for February. Sales were expected to have risen, helped along by low interest rates and steady job creation.

Amazon is trying to interest the nation’s largest retailers in collaborating on the technology behind cashierless stores. So far, they aren’t sold.

Amazon is making some of the software that underpins its “Go” stores available through an organization called Dent, which has had talks with officials at Walmart and Target, according to people familiar with the matter. The talks highlight Amazon’s ambition to have other retailers adopt its technology, and the interest of retailers like Walmart and Target in modernizing their stores with cheaper, faster networking technology and more automation and data-driven decision-making.

• Two years ago, Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey issued 13 tweets emphasizing the need to make conversations on the platform less toxic. Mr. Dorsey said Twitter needed to work with outside researchers and hold itself publicly accountable for its progress. Now experts working with the company say those efforts have stalled, and some worry that Twitter’s commitment last week to boost growth—made in response to pressure from an activist investor—could further complicate those attempts.
   
• Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is stepping down from the company’s board of directors marking the biggest departure from the tech industry’s corporate boardrooms since the death of longtime rival and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
   
• Bayer has agreed on draft settlement terms with half a dozen law firms representing tens of thousands of plaintiffs alleging that its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, pushing the litigation closer to a final resolution, according to people familiar with the matter.
   
• State oil giant Saudi Aramco will cut its spending this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, while it increases its dividend, the company said, as its share price continued to decline amid the Saudi regime’s price war with Russia.
   
• The North American private-equity arm of Morgan Stanley Investment Management has agreed to sell veterinary clinic chain Pathway Vet Alliance LLC to consumer-focused buyout firm TSG Consumer Partners, according to people familiar with the matter.
   
• Melinta Therapeutics Inc. has received bankruptcy-court approval to proceed with a chapter 11 sale process that will allow the antibiotics maker's senior lender to take over the company in three weeks pending approval of a proposed reorganization plan.
   
• Companies are getting closer to replacing the battery that has led the consumer-electronics revolution over the past 30 years.

The cybersecurity-vendor sector is set to trim some of its fat in 2020, venture-capital executives say, and companies that weave sophisticated technologies such as artificial intelligence into their products are the ones likely to succeed.

A number of high-profile acquisitions in 2019 presage further consolidation in 2020, they say. Among the banner deals last year were VMware Inc.’s acquisition of Carbon Black for $2.3 billion, announced in August, and Broadcom Inc.’s $10.7 billion deal to buy Symantec Corp.’s enterprise security business.

Airbus executives raised concerns about fees paid to a number of middlemen working with its helicopter division, led at the time by the company’s current chief executive, according to internal documents related to Airbus’s record $4 billion bribery settlement in January.

In that settlement, U.S., U.K, and French prosecutors alleged Airbus inappropriately paid middlemen to secure orders at its commercial-aviation and its defense and space units. Internal documents submitted to investigators in the probe and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that Airbus executives also raised red flags about payments to middlemen at the helicopter unit.

• The Justice Department is investigating ZTE Corp. for possible bribes of foreign officials, according to people familiar with the matter, which could subject the Chinese telecom giant to a fresh round of criminal penalties amid increasing tensions between the U.S. and China.
   
• U.S. air-safety officials are investigating potential structural problems affecting hundreds of Boeing 737 jets following an in-flight incident that left a 12-inch rupture in the aluminum skin of a Southwest Airlines plane.
   
• Popular short-video app TikTok said it would halt using China-based moderators to monitor overseas content and shift that work to those outside of China. The soaring popularity of TikTok has attracted the attention of some American lawmakers worried about its Chinese roots.
   
• Two dozen state attorneys general are trying to end bankruptcy protections for Purdue Pharma's controlling Sackler family, saying that shielding them from lawsuits during settlement talks sends the wrong message about the justice system.
   
• The nation’s biggest banks have fewer government examiners roaming their hallways as federal regulators temporarily switch to teleworking to help control the spread of the coronavirus.

With global supply chains in disarray amid the U.S.-China trade war and the coronavirus pandemic, Mexico might seem a logical winner if U.S. companies decide they want to diversify away from China and make some products closer to home.

Mexico clinched a new trade deal with the U.S. and Canada last year and has now replaced China as the U.S.’s largest single trading partner.

• In an about-face, U.S. trade officials removed tariffs on dozens of medical items imported from China amid the coronavirus crisis—including some protective gowns, exam gloves, patient bags, surgical drapes and medical waste disposal bags. U.S. trade officials had previously ruled that these items couldn’t get exemptions.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said his agency would advance funds to businesses so they can meet paid sick-leave requirements under a new House bill to combat the novel coronavirus.

Mr. Mnuchin said employers will be able to use cash deposited with the Internal Revenue Service to pay sick-leave wages. For businesses that wouldn’t have sufficient taxes to draw from, the Treasury would make advances to cover the costs, he said. Mr. Mnuchin said the measures were aimed at helping businesses that may have cash-flow problems related to disruptions from the virus.

• The Bank of Canada issued an emergency half-percentage-point rate cut, saying the coronavirus pandemic will have serious consequences.
   
• The first three of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s mega repo operations have drawn far lighter demand than what the central bank is willing to provide.

Circor International Inc., a Burlington, Mass.-based maker of technology products and sub-systems, named Abhishek Khandelwal chief financial officer, effective April 6. Mr. Khandelwal since 2010 has held senior finance roles at IDEX Corp., most recently as vice president corporate finance and operations CFO.

Maestrano Group PLC, a London-based artificial-intelligence platform, appointed Robert Lojszczyk chief financial officer. Mr. Lojszczyk most recently served as a principal of the CFO Centre Pty Ltd.

Write to Mark Maurer at mark.maurer@wsj.com. 

Follow the CFO Journal team on Twitter: @CFOJournal, @Nina_Trentmann, @markgmaurer.

The CFO Journal editor, Jack Hagel, can be reached at jack.hagel@wsj.com.