French household spending slowed in July, getting the third quarter off to a sluggish start after a similarly lacklustre first half of the year. Consumer spending increased 0.1 per cent month-on-month, following a 0.3 per cent rise in June and a 1.1 per cent climb in May. A small rise in food consumption offset a similar decline in energy. “Growth in French household consumption remained sluggish at the start of the third quarter,” said Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

Air France KLM shares slumped on Monday after the airline’s biggest pilots union said over the weekend that there were risks of further strikes if pay talks with management did not resume, The Irish Times reported. Air France KLM shares were down 5.8 per cent in early trading, making them the worst performers on Paris’ SBF-120 equity index. The stock has fallen by around 40 per cent so far in 2018.

Dismal news for French manufacturers in May, who saw industrial production fall by 0.2 per cent compared to April as the sector registered a quarter-on-quarter decline, the Financial Times reported. The decline was below the 0.7 per cent rise expected by economists in a Reuters poll, and followed a 0.5 per cent fall in April, according to data from Insee. Over the quarter, manufacturing output in one of the eurozone’s biggest economies fell by 0.5 per cent, while overall industrial production fell by 0.8 per cent.

The French financial regulator has said it will not seek changes to “delegation” rules — a move that could have restricted UK fund managers serving overseas clients after Brexit, the Financial Times reported. Current rules permit asset management companies to operate in multiple locations, including London, and the City has become a global centre of portfolio management. It had been feared, however, that UK managers could be cut off from European clients if national regulators sought stricter regulation.

Business confidence in France was higher than expected in June, with a particular uptick in optimism in the services sector, but the manufacturing sector continued to lose steam, according to the latest survey data from IHS Markit, the Financial Times reported. France’s flash composite purchasing managers’ index rose to a two-month high of 55.6 and the services PMI rose to 56.4, both higher readings than the figures expected by economists in a Reuters poll, (54.2 and 54.3 respectively).

France and Germany’s “historic” agreement to establish a eurozone budget has run into immediate opposition from hawkish governments that are sceptical of plans to create a fiscal capacity for the single currency area, the Financial Times reported. Eurozone finance ministers are meeting in Luxembourg today for the first eurogroup gathering since a Franco-German deal this week on the next steps to reform monetary union. It includes a plan to develop a euro-area budget to help economies “converge” and boost investment during downturns.

France‘s top central banker has said the European Central Bank cannot step in to offset slower growth or market turmoil should a serious trade war materialise or governments overspend, the Financial Times reported. François Villeroy de Galhau, governor of Banque de France, also “strongly“ welcomed the commitment made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s president Emmanuel Macron earlier this week to reform the eurozone economy through more economic integration.  The ECB announced last Thursday that it planned to end its €2.4tn quantitative easing programme by the

France’s finance minister has hailed substantial progress in Franco-German talks over a budget for the eurozone, signalling that an accord could be reached at a meeting between Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel this week, the Financial Times reported. But any deal between the French president and the German chancellor will fall short of Mr Macron’s initial integrationist ambition in terms of size and governance. After one last round of talks over a Franco-German road map for eurozone reforms, Bruno Le Maire, French finance minister, tweeted at the weekend that a “deal is now

Jean-Charles Naouri, chief executive and controlling shareholder of French retailer Groupe Casino, is seen in Parisian circles as the ‘godfather of retail’. In the three decades since the 69-year-old mathematician, former French civil servant and Rothschild banker moved into the private sector, he has constructed a retail empire spanning Europe to Brazil.

French retailer Casino has announced a €1.5bn asset disposal plan to help reduce the debt pile of the group, which has come under mounting pressure in the debt markets in recent weeks. Casino said on Monday after market close that it has identified non-core assets, including real estate assets, which could be sold for an estimated €1.5bn. It has flagged half of the disposals for 2018, and the other half early next year, and expects the asset disposals to help reduce its net debt in France by around €1bn by the end of 2018, the Financial Times reported.