The coronavirus pandemic battered Asian economies in April with social-distancing policies and business closures taking a particularly heavy toll on the region’s service sector firms, surveys showed on Thursday. The outbreak, which has infected more than 2.5 million and killed about 180,000 globally, has also continued to cripple manufacturing, shutting down factories and upending supply chains across the export-heavy region. Asia’s economic woes, seen in flash purchasing managers’ indexes on Thursday, are likely to be echoed in other parts of the world with similar surveys from major European economies, such as Britain and Germany, expected to show massive contractions in their factory and services sectors. Collapsing service sector activity presents a major concern for governments given the millions employed by banks, retailers and hospitality firms, and the threat rising unemployment poses to social stability. Japan’s services sector PMI shrank at a record pace in April, as […]