Germany would relax insolvency rules under proposals set out on Saturday to help avert a wave of bankruptcies in Europe’s biggest economy, provided companies hit by the coronavirus crisis have a robust business model, Reuters reported. Keen to avoid bankruptcies and mass layoffs, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has launched a range of stimulus and relief measures as Germany braces for its biggest slump since World War Two, having shrunk by an unprecedented 9.7% in the second quarter.

Deutsche Bank AG plans to boost lending to commodity traders in the Middle East, even as other banks back away after a spate of defaults in the industry, to help double the size of its regional business, Bloomberg News reported. The German lender, which on Monday appointed Loic Voide and Kees Hoving as co-chief executive officers for the Middle East and Africa, is also targeting bond markets for growth in the region. “In the next five to six years, we would like to double the size of the revenues from what we have today,” Voide said in an interview.

The coronavirus pandemic is taking its toll on the world economy. GDPs of many countries are down as unemployment numbers rise, and companies are shutting up shop, Silicon Canals reported. One of Germany’s largest fintech startups Monedo can now be added to the list as it has filed for insolvency. The fintech’s insolvency application was granted by the Hamburg District Court that has also opened the preliminary insolvency proceedings. The news of Monedo filing for bankruptcy was first reported by Manager Magazin.

Lossmaking German truck and bus manufacturer MAN plans to cull up to one in four jobs globally in a move that will add to concerns about the strength of the recovery in Europe’s largest economy, the Financial Times reported. The cutting of up to 9,500 jobs is part of an overhaul of the business, designed to achieve a return on sales of 8 per cent by 2023 and generate about €1.8bn of cost savings, the company said on Friday.

The number of firms declaring insolvency in Germany was 6.2% lower than in the first half of last year despite the coronavirus crisis, the Statistics Office said, partly because of a rule designed to keep firms afloat in the pandemic, Reuters reported. In March, the government gave companies that find themselves in financial trouble due to the pandemic a respite by allowing them to delay filing for bankruptcy. That was later extended until the end of the year.

German industrial production rose by less than economists had expected in July, fuelling concerns about whether the nascent recovery in the eurozone’s pandemic-stricken economy is running out of steam, the Financial Times reported. The 1.2 per cent month-on-month rise in German industrial output in July reported by the Federal Statistical Office on Monday was the third consecutive month of growth.

Deutsche Bank AG has submitted a bid for some of Wirecard AG’s German assets, but the administrator of the insolvent payments company considers it too low, people familiar with the matter said, Bloomberg News reported. The offer from Germany’s largest lender for Wirecard Bank and some related companies was one of several, the people said. All the non-binding bids were well below 100 million euros ($119 million), which Wirecard administrator Michael Jaffe sees as a minimum to proceed with a sale rather than a liquidation.

The district court of Munich has opened the insolvency proceedings regarding the assets of Wirecard, which were applied for on June 25, 2020, according to a note from the company, Crowdfund Insider reported. The current preliminary insolvency administrator Dr. jur. Michael Jaffé from the law firm JAFFÉ Rechtsanwälte was appointed as the insolvency administrator. A contract to sell Wirecard Brazil SA has already been signed and the sales process for the Wirecard North America Inc. subsidiary is said to be well advanced.

Germany extended another crisis tool to prevent corporate bankruptcies, a move that critics say will store up bigger problems later for Europe’s largest economy, Bloomberg News reported. The longer suspension on insolvency filings has raised alarm bells that it’s masking a growing credit risk that could explode into a wave of bankruptcies when the moratorium ends. It may also be creating a cohort of zombie companies that hold back investment and innovation and act as a drain on the economy.

The German economy contracted by a record 9.7% in the second quarter as consumer spending, company investments and exports all collapsed at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the statistics office said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The economic slump was much stronger than during the financial crisis more than a decade ago, and it represented the sharpest decline since Germany began to record quarterly GDP calculations in 1970, the office said.