Has the financial situation of an airline ever negatively impacted safety?
Pan American World Airways declared bankruptcy in January 1991. In the year previously they were doing everything they could to to avoid that. To help their cash flow, Pan Am sold five of their 747s for cash to Evergreen International Airlines. The deal was that EIA would immediately lease the five back to Pan Am, which they did. Unfortunately, Pan Am soon defaulted on the lease payments and EIA began repossessing the aircraft.

EIA gave Pan Am fair warning on the repossession of the first aircraft, at which time Pan Am swapped out good components for crap components before surrendering the aircraft. Not to be taken again, when EIA repossessed the second aircraft, they did so without warning at the gate when the aircraft arrived in JFK from Europe.

I was the f.o. on the crew that was sent to get the aircraft. We were in the cockpit setting up when one of our maintenance guys came in and said that they had just received orders to boroscope the engines, which they did while we waited in the cockpit.

After an hour or so, one of our JFK managers came into the cockpit and told us that we wouldn't be going anywhere, that the airplane was not flyable as three of the four engines were significantly below required tolerances.

So, if flying a plane load of passengers across the North Atlantic with three out of four engines below required minimum maintenance standards constitutes a negative impact on safety, then, yes, a bad financial situation did indeed, at least once, cause such.