Austria on Wednesday became the first euro zone country to price a public sale of debt below the European Central Bank’s deposit rate, as expectations of more ECB stimulus and worries over the global economy push yields in the bloc to new lows. Source: Reuters
Economics
Canada’s bank regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, on Tuesday raised the capital requirement level for ‘systemically important’ banks in the country by 25 basis points, to 2%. Source: Reuters
- U.S. industrial production fell in April, dragged by a big drop in factory output as production of autos and auto parts continued to slide.
- The Federal Reserve says industrial output — reflecting total production at factories, utilities and mines — dropped 0.5% in April.
- Industrial production also fell 0.5% in February.
“The main installations have been completed, the shut-off valves have been installed, so we can assume that the project will be completed by the end of 2019,” said project spokesman Jens Müller. Source: The Local Deutschland
Russia’s state-owned gas giant Gazprom will start filling the Power of Siberia (Sila Sibiri) natural gas pipeline that connects Russia to China from September 1, Gazprom Transgaz Tomsk said in its corporate magazine on March 14, as cited by Prime. Source: Intellinews
Index provider MSCI Inc. said it would quadruple the contribution of mainland Chinese companies’ to its benchmarks, a move that makes shares in Shanghai and Shenzhen all but unignorable for many international investors. Source: MarketWatch
Japan’s industrial output contracted in November and partially reversed the previous month’s gain, while retail sales slowed sharply as increasing global risks drag on demand and threaten the country’s export-reliant economy. Source: Reuters
Egypt will not compromise or bow down to threats regarding its interests in the River Nile or its water rights, the country’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry has said.
During his speech before the House of Representatives, on Tuesday, Shoukry added that Ethiopia has unilaterally started the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Source Daily News
Thousands of users across the U.S. East Coast faced widespread internet outage from providers including Verizon Communications Inc on Tuesday, disrupting services offered by Google, Amazon, Zoom, Slack and other tech firms. Source Reuters
Some 300 companies have signed a pledge to help hundreds of thousands of maritime workers stranded aboard freight ships around the world because of Covid-19 restrictions. Source France 24
Berlin plans to cut almost all inbound flights to Germany to limit spread of coronavirus variants on its soil.
The danger represented by the various mutations of the virus demands that we examine and discuss within the government drastic measures “, among which” the reduction of air traffic to Germany to almost nil “, Horst Seehofer told the daily Bild . Source Air Live
More than 370 migrants have arrived in Sicily after they were picked up off the Libyan coast by a rescue ship. Most are from sub-Saharan Africa, and many are unaccompanied children. The ship’s crew says it was a huge relief that they were given permission to dock. Source Deutsche Welle
Entrepreneurs in Geleen, Limburg, are furious with the police. He fined them for breaking the curfew when they tried to protect their business from rioters. “I am still shaking,” says café owner Rob Slangen. “That’s how angry I am.” Source RTL
- US says ‘will help our partner Saudi Arabia defend against attacks on its territory’
- Arab coalition thwarted an attack on Riyadh on Saturday by the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen
The US on Sunday condemned an attempted air attack on Riyadh at the weekend and said anyone who tried to undermine the Kingdom’s stability would be held to account. Source Arab News
The police were violently attacked by about thirty individuals in the Mardelles district in Brunoy (Essonne) when they arrested the alleged perpetrator of an assault. An official was injured. The police were called in around 1:40 p.m. this Saturday. A 17-year-old teenager had just been assaulted near the Boulevard du Général de Gaulle in Brunoy. He was unconscious. Source Actu17
A police patrol was attacked by numerous individuals in Pantin (Seine-Saint-Denis) this Sunday afternoon. A man was arrested and taken into police custody shortly after. Source Actu17
Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte is to offer his resignation one week after he survived two confidence votes in parliament.
His office announced he will tell his cabinet on Tuesday morning that he intends to meet President Sergio Matterella to hand in his resignation.
Conte has been under pressure since his governing centre-left coalition, which he has led for 16 months, lost its majority in the Senate. Source EuroNews
Taiwan has reported a large incursion by Chinese warplanes for the second day running, a show of force that coincides with the first days of US President Joe Biden’s term of office. Sunday’s operation involved 15 aircraft and followed a similar drill that led to a warning from Washington. Source BBC
Dutch airline KLM is cutting another 800 to 1 thousand jobs. The aviation sector is not recovering and it is increasingly difficult to make ends meet, the Dutch airline announced on Thursday.
KLM is cutting 500 full-time jobs among the cabin crew, 100 jobs among pilots, and 200 to 400 jobs among the ground crew. This comes on top of the 5 thousand job cuts the airline announced last year with its reorganization plans to get through the coronavirus pandemic. Source NLTimes
Fraport Greece reported a 71.4% annual decline in passenger traffic last year at the 14 regional airports it operates in Greece. The total number of passengers who used the airports of Thessaloniki, Corfu, Hania, Cephalonia, Zakynthos, Aktio, Kavala, Rhodes, Kos, Samos, Mytilene, Mykonos, Santorini and Skiathos reached 8,611,780, of which 5,994,180 were on international flights – a year-on-year decline of 74.2%. Source Ekathimerini
Russian oil drilling giant Gazprom Neft opened a crypto mining farm running on associated gas energy unlocking the power of Russia’s oil and gas resources for the needs of bitcoin (BTC) mining, reports Yahoo Finance. The venue for cryptocurrency mining is on one of the company’s oil drilling sites in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug in Siberia. It is using the associated gas from Gazprom Neft’s oil field as an energy source and has its own power plant to transform this gas into electricity. Source Realnoevremya
The United States’ trade deficit surged to its highest level in more than 14 years in November as businesses boosted imports to replenish inventories, offsetting a rise in exports. Source Reuters
U.S. bankruptcy filings hit their lowest level since 1986 last year thanks to unprecedented fiscal and monetary support from the Fed and Congress.
By the numbers: Total bankruptcy filings for the year fell to 529,068 filings across all chapters, while total filings in the month of December was 34,304, the lowest monthly total since January 2006, according to a release from legal services company Epiq AACER. The number of total 2020 filings was about 1/3 of the number seen in 2010. Source Axios
Italy is working on a plan to take on about 14 billion euros ($17 billion) of UniCredit’s impaired loans to make a takeover of state-owned Monte dei Paschi more attractive for the country’s second-biggest bank, sources told Reuters.
Volkswagen Group has liquidated its unit in Turkey after cancelling plans to establish its first factory in the country, Turkish television channel BloombergHT reported on Tuesday.
The decision to shutter the firm was registered with the Turkish Trade Registry and a call to creditors was issued on Monday, BloombergHT said. Source Ahval
The former head of one of China’s biggest asset management companies has been sentenced to death for corruption, in a relatively rare instance of the country meting out the death penalty for financial crimes. Source FT
Russian natural gas transported to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline touched 28.8 million cubic metres per day, as of Jan. 3, to feed homes and factories as northern China faces frigid weather conditions, national oil and gas pipeline giant PipeChina said. Source Business Recorder
Dec. 22, France’s national statistic agency INSEE reported that, the country’s public debt hit 2,674.3 billion euros (around USD3,255.93 billion) before the end of the July-September period of the present year, making up for 116.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Source MenaFN
14 December France has ordered a dozen public and private bodies to keep their deposits at the Treasury, government documents show, as it quietly builds up safeguards to reinforce its cash flow during the pandemic and ahead of Brexit. Source Reuters
