Plastic car parts maker Novares went into temporary receivership at the end of April, one of the first big French firms to seek protection from creditors due to the coronavirus crisis, despite government bailout schemes and loan guarantees, Reuters reported. Novares, whose sales have collapsed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, said on Monday it had taken the step after struggling to find a rapid agreement with its banks and shareholders and solve a coronavirus-related cash crunch.
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BNP Paribas warned coronavirus could knock a fifth off its 2020 profits as it revealed a €184m blow to its equities trading division after complex derivatives products suffered in volatile markets, the Financial Times reported. The French bank said on Tuesday its net income could fall 15 per cent to 20 per cent this year, with Covid-19 prompting a “drastic revisit of the 2020 macroeconomic scenario”. The lender also earmarked an additional half a billion euros to cover potential loan losses.
Air France-KLM won European Union approval for a 7 billion-euro ($7.7 billion) French aid package that Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said will lead to cutbacks in domestic services, Bloomberg News reported. The carrier obtained a state guarantee and a subordinated shareholder loan, a financial life line executives say was needed for its survival in the face of a collapse in revenue due to the coronavirus pandemic that has pummeled the global industry.
Société Générale will revamp the trading arm of its investment bank for the second time in a year after suffering a devastating hit to its core equities business, chief executive Frédéric Oudéa told the Financial Times. The French bank fell to a shock loss of €326m in the first quarter after revenue in its equity trading unit — long hailed by executives as a key strength — collapsed almost 99 per cent to just €9m, the Financial Times reported.
France expects Group of 20 nations will agree to a debt moratorium for African nations in a conference call later Wednesday, an official at the Elysee Palace said. President Emmanuel Macron has been pushing for debt relief to support African nations caught up in the Covid-19 pandemic and on Monday called for a massive cancellation of the continent’s sovereign debt, Bloomberg News reported. A moratorium would allow African countries “to take a breath and not pay interest,” Macron told Radio France Internationale in an interview released Wednesday.
The French government was forced to revise its economic and financial forecasts for the second time in less than a week after President Emmanuel Macron extended the lockdown to combat the coronavirus, Bloomberg News reported. France will base an emergency budget on economic output contracting 8% this year, instead of 6% as it had planned last week. Extra spending to support companies and workers through the confinement will increase the budget deficit, and the situation could get worse still as there are uncertainties about the health crisis in Asia, the economy in the U.S.
The German and French economies are in the grip of historic recessions which are set to wipe out many years of growth in only a few months, according to forecasts published on Wednesday as leading bodies warned of the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the global economy and trade, the Financial Times reported.
France is preparing fiscal stimulus focusing on investment and financial aid for industrial sectors including the automotive industry, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said, giving the first indication of how the government plans to reboot the economy after the coronavirus crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Like other European countries, France has so far focused the heft of emergency spending on benefits for furloughed workers and a vast loan guarantee program to prevent bankruptcies. But the government is now working on a plan for when the confinements are lifted and businesses reopen.
As lockdowns shutter stores and keep consumers cooped up at home, there will be many losers from the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus. But there will also be a few winners, Bloomberg News reported in a commentary. Casino Guichard Perrachon SA, the French supermarket operator that’s been a target for short-selling hedge funds, is emerging as a beneficiary, in line with other grocers seeing a frantic stockpiling of food on both sides of the Atlantic. While Casino’s complex financial structure has long been a source of consternation, there are some jewels in its highly leveraged crown.