Bloomberg ANA Holdings’s plan to launch a new low-cost carrier has doubters, given the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on airlines worldwide and an industry trend towards retrenching. The company said it will launch a new budget brand around fiscal year 2022, targeting medium-distance flights to Southeast Asia and Oceania. That coincided with the carrier unveiling a restructuring plan involving cost reductions …

Bloomberg European stocks dropped to a five-month low and US equity futures slumped as rising coronavirus infections and tougher lockdowns added to worries about the economic hit from pandemic. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index sinks 2.5% after German Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed closing bars and restaurants for a month to curb the spread of the virus. The selloff across Europe …

Bloomberg South Africa’s main stock index dropped as much as 0.8% to the lowest since September 28 as major mining companies led the declines, with investors globally concerned about the impact of the worsening pandemic on economic activity and as jitters over next week’s US presidential election rise. Locally, traders are awaiting Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s medium-term budget statement. The …

Bloomberg Green power is set to draw around $11 trillion of investment in the coming decades as the cost of renewables plummets and more of the world’s energy comes from electricity. That’s the latest analysis from BloombergNEF (BNEF) in its annual New Energy Outlook report. It’s further evidence of how cheap renewable power sources will continue to push aside fossil fuels …

Bloomberg Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd, South Africa’s indebted power utility, started a billion-dollar round of investments in Africa’s oldest and only nuclear power plant before getting permission from safety regulators that the reactor’s lifetime can be extended. The decision to begin installing new steam generators at the Koeberg plant near Cape Town underscores state-owned Eskom’s confidence that it will win …

Bloomberg ANA Holdings Inc forecast its biggest-ever operating loss of 505 billion yen ($4.8 billion) for the fiscal year through March 2021, the latest airline to face an existential threat to its business due to the pandemic. The Japanese carrier unveiled a restructuring plan that calls for: A newly branded low-cost carrier in addition to Peach, the budget airline already …

Bloomberg Deutsche Lufthansa AG told staff that winter schedule cutbacks will cause it to bench an additional 125 aircraft and temporarily close large parts of its administrative operations. The reduction will cut the carrier’s active fleet back to the level it operated in the 1970s, with the impact filtering through its operations, it said in a letter to employees seen …

Bloomberg The resurgent Covid-19 pandemic is pushing back the recovery in air travel, turning winter into a survival test for carriers now pinning hopes on a spring rebound. Airlines are urging governments to introduce more testing and travel bubbles to help spur demand. The industry is on track to burn through an estimated $77 billion in cash the second half. …

Bloomberg French Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari isn’t shying away from a possible temporary nationalisation of airlines hit by the travel slowdown caused by the coronavirus epidemic. Nationalising airlines is “a technical option, temporarily, but you need a project, a strategy,” Djebbari said on Europe 1 radio. “Nationalising a company, entering the company’s capital, it’s a short-term solution.” France and the …

Bloomberg Amazon.com and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries’s fight for dominance of India’s lucrative e-commerce space is turning into a face-off, with both sides battling over the assets of a supermarket chain that could be key to their wider ambitions. Ambani and Jeff Bezos, two of the world’s wealthiest men, want the stores and warehouses of Future Retail Ltd, which has …