Bloomberg Neoen SA will start construction on Australia’s biggest solar farm after winning a power purchase agreement with Queensland state’s renewables company. The Paris-based company will invest A$570 million ($366 million) in the Western Downs Green Power Hub, with first electricity from the facility expected in the first quarter of 2022. As much as to three-quarters of the energy produced ...

Bloomberg German factories saw demand collapse in March, when measures to contain the coronavirus brought the economy to a sudden halt. Orders fell 15.6% from the previous month, the most since data collection started in 1991 and more than economists predicted. While all sectors were affected, investment goods plunged heavily. The Economy Ministry warned of big declines in production due ...

Bloomberg Italy and Spain, the two European countries most severely hit by the coronavirus, are suffering even deeper slumps after record contractions in the first quarter. Lockdowns that shut hotels and restaurants meant companies experienced unprecedented declines in output and new orders in April, and cut jobs like never before in the history of IHS Markit’s Purchasing Managers’ Surveys. Prospects ...

Bloomberg Sweden’s “relatively gentle lockdown strategy” will limit the downturn in its economy compared to those in other Nordic countries, according to analysts writing in SEB’s outlook report. The region’s biggest economy will nevertheless be severely tested by the corona crisis with SEB expecting Swedish GDP to shrink by almost 7% in 2020, making it the largest drop in modern ...

Bloomberg General Motors Co. is in discussions with banks to raise a new $2 billion loan to increase liquidity as it deals with a continuing slump in consumer demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The loan is structured as a 364-day revolving credit facility and is a precautionary measure to raise company’s liquidity, the people said, asking not to be ...

Bloomberg The Trump administration extended the date that companies can return loans from a popular coronavirus relief program without paying a penalty by one week to May 14. The US Treasury Department and Small Business Administration (SBA) had set May 7 as the date for firms that had improperly taken loans from the Paycheck Protection Program to repay them, but ...

Bloomberg Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is examining ways to move millions of workers off government support and back into their jobs as the UK leaves its lockdown. In March, as the UK went into lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus, Sunak announced a furlough program where workers received 80% of their wage to stay home. It’s now ...

Bloomberg Illinois delayed the planned auction of $1.2 billion of short-term debt as it faces record-high penalties to borrow on Wall Street because of the deep financial hit the state is being dealt by the coronavirus shutdown. The worst-rated state had planned to sell about $1.2 billion of short-term tax-exempt general-obligation debt on Wednesday, its first borrowing during the pandemic, ...

Bloomberg China fired back at US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, saying he has no evidence to back up claims that the virus that causes Covid-19 escaped from a lab in the central city of Wuhan. The US attacks on China were part of an election year strategy by President Donald Trump’s Republican Party ahead of this year’s election, Chinese ...

Bloomberg US President Donald Trump supports Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s proposal to hold a summit of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the American ambassador to Moscow said in an interview with a Russian news service. Trump sent a message recently to President Putin describing the initiative as a “good idea,” the Interfax news service cited ...