Polish carrier LOT is acquiring Thomas Cook’s German airline Condor, creating a leading aviation group in Europe carrying more than 20 million passengers a year, the companies said on Friday. Condor, which according to sources was sold for about 300 million euros ($333 million), operates a fleet of more than 50 aircraft while LOT has a fleet of 80 aircraft, Reuters reported. LOT chief executive Rafal Milczarski said he sees a possible order of around 30 planes from Boeing and Airbus.

Deutsche Bank AG and a Singapore based hedge fund bought more debt of an embattled Indian shadow lender, highlighting the growing foreign interest in the discounted assets of the financier at the center of a credit crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Deutsche Bank has almost doubled the debt it holds of Altico Capital India Ltd. to 3 billion rupees ($42.1 million) in the last four months, while Singapore-based Broad Peak Investment Advisers Ltd. has acquired debt of about 1 billion rupees, people familiar with the matter said.

Deutsche Bank AG has moved an insolvency application against Uttam Galva Steels Ltd. at the National Company Law Tribunal to recover dues against the foreign currency-denominated loans its Singapore branch extended, BloombergQuint reported. Uttam Galva Steels—which had entered into a $20-million credit facility agreement with the lender for its capital and operational needs—had challenged the maintainability of the bank’s application under section 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. The section allows financial creditors to file insolvency application.

Condor, the airline that used to belong to Thomas Cook, has attracted interest from buyout groups Apollo and Greybull as well as Polish carrier LOT, which are expected to submit final bids next week, a person close to the matter said, Reuters reported. Each of the bidders could tie up with some of Germany’s leading tour operators in a potential deal to buy Condor, the person said on Thursday. Condor and Apollo declined to comment, while Greybull and LOT were not immediately available for comment.

A Deutsche Bank-led consortium’s efforts to buy out the debt of a power plant operator in eastern India have advanced, after no rival bidder emerged, Bloomberg News reported. The struggling utility is Jindal India Thermal Power Ltd., one of a string of power plants being put up for sale by banks stuck with their defaulting debt. The sector has been hit hard by oversupply in recent years, a consequence of a costly push to bridge India’s once chronic power deficit and expand reach to under-supplied rural areas. Power generators form a significant chunk of India’s $130 billion bad loan pile.

Amid rising defaults and tighter liquidity for Chinese privately-owned enterprises, the nation’s banks are letting some companies fail, something Deutsche Bank AG says presents bigger opportunities for foreign investors in troubled debt, Bloomberg News reported. The German lender is an active distressed player in Asia Pacific and has bet on some of the biggest restructuring in the region, including commodities trader Noble Group Ltd. China is taking steps to allow more foreign investment into the country’s 2.37 trillion yuan ($344 billion) non-performing loan market. It will give U.S.

The cognoscenti of international economics are once again agape, and not in a flattering way, at the budget surpluses Germany’s government keeps running, when instead it should be stimulating the economy with tax cuts and higher spending, Bloomberg News reported in a commentary. The surplus revealed this week for 2019, at 13.5 billion euros ($15 billion), is the fifth in a row, and the biggest ever. Many Germans still regard such numbers as signs of economic virtue and virility, as they keep slashing public debt and reveling in high employment numbers.

German cadmium telluride solar panel producer Calyxo TS Solar GmbH filed for insolvency in December for the second time in less than two years in the district court in Aachen, Germany, pv magazine reported. The court has appointed Christoph Niering from the law firm Niering Stock Tömp to serve as the provisional insolvency administrator. Talks on the possible arrival of new strategic partners are still ongoing, so management has been forced to open new proceedings. Niering said on Friday that it is still possible to maintain operations and process existing orders.

More than 400,000 jobs could be lost in Germany over the next decade as its auto industry shifts towards electric vehicles, according to a government-sanctioned report that underlines the wrenching change facing Europe’s largest economy, the Financial Times reported. In a worst-case scenario, Germany’s workforce could shrink by almost 1 per cent by 2030 if carmakers such as Volkswagen and Daimler are forced to rely on imports to meet targets for electric vehicle sales. The vast majority of vehicle batteries — the most valuable component of electric cars — are manufactured in Asia.

Jörg Jahnke Dachbau, a Berlin roofing company, is facing a new year’s slump with few parallels in its history, the Financial Times reported. “It’s an absolute disaster,” said its managing director, Joachim Meder. “I’ve lost €4.5m in orders. It’s as if someone’s just turned out the lights.” The culprit is the Berlin city government’s plan to freeze rents for five years — a move critics describe as one of the most far-reaching interventions in the capital’s housing market since German reunification.