Creditors of Austrian motorbike maker KTM AG approved a restructuring plan that will write off 70% of the company’s debt and resume production with the help of new investments, Bloomberg News reported. KTM will need to secure €548 million ($575 million) of funding by May 23 to pay creditors, according to the plan that was approved on Tuesday by a majority of creditors. An extended circle of shareholders will provide additional financing to resume production, the company’s parent, Pierer Mobility, said in a statement. Share of Pierer Mobility rallied 11% in Zurich after the announcement.
Read more
U.S. carmaker Tesla will acquire parts of the insolvent German high-tech parts maker Manz AG , including more than 300 employees at its site in Reutlingen city in the southwest, the German company said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The deal marks a wider presence by Tesla in Germany, where it runs a manufacturing site near Berlin, even after CEO Elon Musk endorsed the far-right party AfD, which mainstream parties have refused to work with due to its extreme positions. Tesla sold almost 60% fewer cars in Germany in January than a year earlier, as the U.S.
Read more
Germany’s economy contracted in the final quarter of 2024, the country’s statistics agency confirmed Tuesday, underlining the scale of the challenge for the next German government to turn around its economic fortunes, the Wall Street Journal reported. Europe’s largest economy shrank 0.2% in the three months to the end of December, matching a prior estimate published in January, the agency Destatis said. The country’s economy contracted for a second year in a row in 2024, also by 0.2%.
Read more
Wages in the eurozone rose at a slower pace during the three months through December as the economy stalled, paving the way for further reductions in the European Central Bank’s key interest rate, the Wall Street Journal reported. The ECB on Tuesday said wages set through negotiations between employers and labor unions or similar bodies were 4.12% higher in the fourth quarter of 2024 than a year earlier, a slowdown from the 5.43% increase recorded in the three months through September.
Read more
Hungary left its key interest rate unchanged for a fifth month after accelerating inflation bolstered policymakers’ bias against monetary easing in the months ahead, Bloomberg News reported. The National Bank of Hungary kept the benchmark at 6.5% on Tuesday at the last policy meeting that was chaired by Governor Gyorgy Matolcsy. The decision matched all 23 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. Annual price growth accelerated to a 13-month high of 5.5% in January, underscoring concerns that inflation expectations may stabilize at higher-than-thought levels.
Read more
The European Central Bank may have to lower its key rate to a level that stimulates activity if the eurozone economy remains weak and inflation cools, the head of Belgium’s central bank said in an interview, the Wall Street Journal reported. National Bank of Belgium Governor Pierre Wunsch, who is an ECB rate setter, also said a big increase in military spending to reduce Europe’s dependence on the U.S. could revive European factories that have too much capacity and too little demand.
Read more
Kremlin officials are dangling the prospect of lucrative investment deals for American energy companies, apparently seeking to convince President Trump that large economic gains could come from siding with Moscow in ending the war in Ukraine and scrapping economic sanctions on Russia, the New York Times reported. There is no doubt that Russia has vast troves of oil and natural gas, but an effort to lure American or other Western energy companies to undertake Russian projects is likely to encounter skepticism, not least because of the companies' recent history in Russia.
Read more