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Bloomberg Former German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble backed the European Union’s (EU) proposed 500 billion-euro ($545 billion) economic-recovery plan, adding a key voice to a standoff with EU countries focusing on fiscal austerity. The comments by Schaeuble, who remains influential within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, suggest he’s gearing up to play a role when the package ...

Bloomberg Sweden’s unemployment rate rose more than expected in April as the effects of the Covid-19 crisis continued to wreak havoc across the Nordic region’s biggest economy. The seasonally-adjusted jobless measure increased to 7.9% from 6.7% a month earlier, Statistics Sweden reported. Economists were expecting a rate of 7.8%, according to the median of seven estimates from a Bloomberg survey. ...

Bloomberg Hertz Global Holdings Inc., the car-rental company which filed for bankruptcy, said the collapse in air travel amid the coronavirus hit its biggest source of rental revenue. “The overall impact of the Covid-19 crisis devastated our revenue,” according to a court filing signed by Jamere Jackson, an executive vice president and chief financial officer of Hertz. The company, whose ...

Bloomberg Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc is poised to replace Chief Executive Officer Andy Palmer with the head of Daimler AG’s Mercedes-AMG performance division, according to people familiar with the matter. AMG head Tobias Moers could be named as Aston Martin’s new CEO as soon as this week, the people said, asking not to be named because the matter ...

Bloomberg German businesses are counting on an improvement in the economy in the second half after the coronavirus pandemic depressed private spending and investment and plunged the economy into a recession. Companies surveyed by Ifo showed cautious optimism in May, with a gauge of expectations rising after the previous month’s plunge. A full-fledged recovery though is still a long way ...

Bloomberg As BlackRock starts to kick the tires of Sweden’s credit market at the behest of the Riksbank, a world of trouble is about to reveal itself. “This market seems completely dead,” said Hakan Karlsson, chief executive of MaxFastigheter i Sverige AB, a property firm with an unrated bond maturing in September. “If we want to retain the possibility of ...

Bloomberg China set its daily yuan reference rate at the weakest level since 2008 after the currency hit a seven-month low in onshore trading amid increasing political tensions with US. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) put the yuan fixing at 7.1209 per dollar. That compares with the 7.122 average estimate in a Bloomberg survey of traders and analysts. The ...

Bloomberg The robots advising investors at the biggest Nordic banks just had their best quarter since being switched on. Much of their sudden popularity has coincided with the crisis triggered by Covid-19. But the banks behind the bots say the development has also laid bare where human financial advisers add no value, and robots do. At the biggest Nordic bank, ...

Bloomberg Singapore’s currency looks set to remain under pressure as global headwinds outweigh the benefits of an easing in the nationwide lockdown. The US dollar-Singapore dollar pair has failed to break below technical support at its one-month low, suggesting its next move could well be higher. Data this week is expected to show the nation’s economy contracted 1.8% y/y in ...

Bloomberg Investec Chief Executive Officer Fani Titi saw a sign of things to come when he dropped by the bank’s headquarters last week. The usually buzzing escalators that criss-cross the four-story building in Sandton, South Africa’s business capital, were eerily silent. He was one of only 440 employees in an office block normally occupied by 10 times that number. Two ...