The Czech Republic won’t be joining the euro anytime soon, if the billionaire who’s poised to be the country’s next prime minister has anything to do with it. “No euro. I don’t want the euro. We don’t want the euro here,” Babis said Friday in an interview on the sidelines of the reSITE cities conference in Prague. “Everybody knows it’s bankrupt. It’s about our sovereignty. I want the Czech koruna, and an independent central bank. I don’t want another issue that Brussels would be meddling with.” Source Bloomberg
General Motors will keep two of its assembly plants shuttered until at least mid-April, another until the end of March and will idle a fourth, all due to a severe shortage of semiconductor chips used in various vehicle parts. Source Detroit Free Press
Germany’s national carrier Lufthansa has announced billions of euros worth of losses for 2020. Coronavirus disruption has catapulted the airline into an unprecedented crisis. The German airline Lufthansa on Thursday announced a record loss of €6.7 billion ($8 billion) in the COVID-19-stricken year of 2020. That compared with a profit of €1.2 billion for 2019. Source DW
Investors flocked to Italy’s inaugural environment-focused government bond offering on Wednesday, allowing the country to raise more than €8bn. The banks running the issuance chalked up around €80bn in orders for €8.5bn of debt. It was the biggest debut sovereign green bond from a European issuer to date, according to Intesa Sanpaolo, which worked on the deal. Source FT
