International News

Bloomberg The German economy will recover from coronavirus crisis and resume growth by October “at the latest,” Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told Bild am Sonntag. Altmaier expects the German economy to grow by more than 5% in 2021 after shrinking 6% this year, the newspaper cites him as saying in an interview. The minister sees the number of jobless in ...

Bloomberg Bikes are increasingly muscling aside cars on Europe’s city streets, as coronavirus accelerates a shift towards pedal power. Even before the pandemic, bicycles were enjoying an uptick in demand from environmentally conscious consumers, but the risk of contagion on buses and subways increased the appeal. The emergence of e-bikes, which boost power with an electric motor, has removed some ...

Bloomberg The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) called for sweeping new powers to roll back the dominance of Google and Facebook Inc. in the online-advertising market, a move designed to push global regulators to be more aggressive against the tech giants. The watchdog said a new regime should have the ability to respond far more quickly to digital monopolies ...

Bloomberg Bankrupt Hertz Global Holdings Inc. and its bondholders are squaring off over how to shrink its nearly half-a-million vehicle fleet. Market watchers say the outcome could upend the multi-billion dollar lease-backed ABS industry. The cars are housed in an entity linked to Hertz’s asset-backed securities and leased to the rental giant. Normally, when a company with ABS files for ...

Bloomberg The World Bank projects the recession in Latin America and the Caribbean will be the worst downturn since reliable data began in 1901, setting back progress on fighting inequality and poverty. The development institution expects a gross domestic product (GDP) contraction of more than 7% for 2020, making it worse than any crisis of the past century, including the ...

Bloomberg Rental e-scooters will become legal on UK roads from July 4 after the government published the rules companies must follow to deploy the electric vehicles. Large-scale trials can start at the weekend and last for a year, the Department for Transport said in a statement. It will closely monitor activity and public feedback with a view to fully legalising ...

Bloomberg Consulting firm Accenture is cutting up to 900 jobs, or 8% of its UK workforce, as the coronavirus pandemic prompted a sharp slump in demand for its advisory work. Between 700 and 900 jobs will be affected by the planned cuts, an Accenture spokesman said Thursday in an email. The company has notified staff and plans “collective consultation” for ...

Bloomberg Daimler AG Chief Executive Officer Ola Kallenius said the maker of Mercedes-Benz cars and the industry as a whole face painful cutbacks to overcome the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic. The virus outbreak will force manufacturers to do more significant restructuring than they had planned before the crisis erupted, Kallenius said during a webcast hosted by Germany’s largest ...

Bloomberg German unemployment surged in June as one of country’s leading economic research institutes warned of a slower-than-expected economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Another sharp gain last month has taken the number of job losses in the second quarter to 678,000 and the total to just below 3 million, a threshold not broken since 2011. Yet more redundancies were ...

Bloomberg Hedge funds that bought credit insurance on Wirecard AG debt are among those in line for a windfall of as much as $212 million after the disgraced German payments company filed for insolvency last week. A committee of traders ruled that Wirecard has gone through a so-called bankruptcy credit event, triggering payouts to holders of credit-default swaps. These contracts ...