Pushing member states to address salary disparities between men and women, the European Union revealed details on Thursday of a proposed law that would require companies to divulge gender pay gaps and give job candidates access to salary information in employment interviews, the New York Times reported. It also would provide women with better tools to fight for equal pay. The move comes as female workers across the world have been disproportionately affected by the economic repercussions of the coronavirus crisis, and it could lead to sanctions on companies that do not comply.
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Resources Per Country
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- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
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- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Gibraltar
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- Guernsey
- Hungary
- Iceland
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- Isle of Man
- Italy
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- Latvia
- Liechtenstein
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- Macedonia
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- Moldova
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- San Marino
- Serbia
- Slovakia
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- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
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European governments must help businesses boost their equity or face a wave of bankruptcies and unemployment that could cost 15 million jobs, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund, Bloomberg News reported. The Fund estimates massive public cash handouts during the pandemic helped save 30 million jobs, but the share of insolvent companies still increased, with small firms particularly affected. To lift European business out of danger, it said a combination of public and private support totaling 2% to 3% of economic output is needed.
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Embattled financial startup Greensill Capital plans to file for insolvency in the U.K. this week, as it simultaneously moves toward a deal to sell its operating business to Apollo Global Management, the Wall Street Journal reported. Also Wednesday, in a dramatic ratcheting up of Greensill’s problems, Germany’s top financial regulator BaFin referred matters related to the firm’s banking unit, Greensill Bank AG, to criminal prosecutors, according to a spokesman for the Bremen prosecutors office.
Czech Airlines’ insolvency petition sets out the scale of the company’s financial problems, which it partly attributes to the inability to source rescue funding from the Czech government, FlightGlobal reported. The company has 266 creditors, with the total liability to suppliers amounting to Kc809 million ($37.1 million) as of 25 February, its petition to a Prague municipal court states. But the petition, seen by FlightGlobal, adds that there is a debt of nearly Kc1 billion to “hundreds of thousands” of passengers who are owed for the cancellation of flights.
The European Union’s executive arm is likely to extend a suspension of the bloc’s debt rules through next year amid uncertainty over the region’s economic recovery, Bloomberg News reported. In its guidance on fiscal policy for the coming months, the European Commission outlined its parameters for assessing whether to prolong a waiver of the EU’s spending limits, signaling that it won’t reinstate them at least until 2023. The commission first scrapped the rules last year as governments sought to cushion the blow of the pandemic with extraordinary levels of support.
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Aon will face a list of objections by the EU’s antitrust watchdog which it must overcome with concessions to proceed with its $30 billion bid for Willis Towers Watson, Reuters reported. The negotiations may derail Aon’s goal of closing the deal in the first half of the year unless it offers concessions in the coming weeks to stave off the charge sheet. The deal, announced a year ago, would create the world’s largest insurance broker, putting the merged entity ahead of world No. 1 Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc.
Britain’s big four banks amassed more than 200 billion pounds ($277.52 billion) of new deposits last year as customers reined in spending through pandemic lockdowns, far outstripping extra lending to struggling businesses and households, Reuters reported. Full-year earnings reported by HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest last month revealed the extent to which lenders’ finances have been upended by the crisis. The banks now face a glut in savings, a Reuters analysis of the banks’ results show, as domestic customers of the four lenders deposited 221 billion pounds of extra cash.
Norwegian Air has withdrawn requests to repudiate a total of 36 aircraft leases after reaching agreement with the lessors in question as part of a restructuring process, Ireland’s High Court heard on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The budget airline was late last year given protection from bankruptcy in both Norway and Ireland, where most of its assets are registered, and is aiming to emerge from the process with fewer aircraft and less debt.
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Irish public finances fell deeper into the red last month as spending on various pandemic-related supports rose and tax receipts fell, the Irish Times reported. The latest exchequer returns, published by the Department of Finance, show the Government’s budget deficit - on a rolling 12-month basis – swelled to just over €14 billion in February. This was fuelled by a combination of falling tax revenues and increased spending on financial supports for impacted workers and businesses.
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Poland’s government received an EU slapdown over its radical judicial reforms after the bloc’s highest court ruled Tuesday that changes to the way Polish Supreme Court judges are appointed may infringe EU law, Politico reported. The judgment comes amid growing concern about the independence of Poland’s judiciary, and forms part of a years-long legal and political conflict between Brussels and Warsaw over worries that the nationalist government is backsliding on the EU’s democratic standards.
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