Germany

Leisure Cargo (LC) is to enter insolvency following the loss of contracts with TUI and another carrier. A spokesperson for the GSSA confirmed to The Loadstar it had begun insolvency proceedings at a court in Dusseldorf, with White & Case appointed trustees, The Loadstar reported. Reorganisation manager Tillmann Peeters, of Falkensteg Restrukturierung, said: “We want to stabilise business operations quickly and continue as smoothly as possible.

Deutsche Bank on Monday acknowledged a lapse in its money laundering controls, underlining the bank’s continuing struggle to move beyond a series of scandals that have helped push its stock price to a record low, the International New York Times reported. An internal audit uncovered deficiencies in the way that the bank processed checks on behalf of clients, Deutsche Bank said in a statement. The audit, which examined the bank’s operations in Britain, did not find any cases of money laundering or breaches of international sanctions that occurred because of the lapses, the bank said.

Deutsche Bank AG’s credit rating was cut by Fitch Ratings, which cited the firm’s lack of progress in improving operations, Bloomberg News reported. The bank’s long-term issuer default rating was downgraded to BBB from BBB+, Fitch said in a statement on Friday. “The downgrade of Deutsche Bank reflects its continued difficulty and limited progress in improving its profitability and stabilizing its business model,” Fitch said. The bank has a total of 145.7 billion euros ($165.2 billion) of public bonds and loans outstanding, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Deutsche Bank AG fell to a fresh record low Monday amid a broad-based slump in European bank stocks, adding to pressure on Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing to come up with a more decisive solution for his ailing investment bank, Bloomberg News reported. With concerns about a widening trade war weighing on global stocks and clouding the outlook for higher interest rates, the lender fell as much as 4.7% in Frankfurt trading. That left the shares below 6 euros ($6.70) for the first time, while the cost to protect against a default in the bank’s debt jumped.

Germany’s jobless rate this month rose for the first time in more than five years in the latest sign of the struggles facing Europe’s biggest economy, the Financial Times reported. The unemployment rate climbed to 5 per cent in May from April’s 4.9 per cent — the lowest since at least 1991, according to data from the country’s central bank. It marked the first monthly increase since November 2013. The tick higher in the jobless rate came as 60,000 more people were considered unemployed in May from the previous month, the largest such increase in a decade.

Skilled workers are in short supply for the eurozone’s smaller businesses, which spells good news for wages and domestic demand as the single-currency region enjoys record low unemployment, the Financial Times reported. One in four small and medium-sized businesses in the eurozone said that the biggest challenge they face is a lack of skilled labour. This is the highest proportion across all the issues they face and is up from 15 per cent three years ago, a survey by the European Central Bank found on Wednesday.

Business confidence in Germany weakened to its lowest level in more than four years this month, casting fresh doubt over the health of the eurozone’s largest economy amid conflicting economic indicators, the Financial Times reported. The Ifo Institute’s business climate indicator in May fell to 97.9, below analyst expectations and down from 99.2 the previous month. The reading is the lowest since November 2014, according to FactSet data. Much of the decline was down to a fall in assessment of current conditions, which fell to 100.0 from 103.4 the previous month.

Avianca was a failing airline with 37 outdated planes when German Efromovich purchased it out of bankruptcy in 2004. Over 15 years the Bolivian businessman built it into a regional powerhouse as Latin America’s second-largest carrier. But for all its success, the Bogota-based company is now back on a rocky foundation, Bloomberg News reported. Its stock price is down by almost 75% since it went public in 2011 and its bonds are trading in distressed territory amid concerns it will struggle to refinance debt. Avianca’s first-quarter loss was the biggest since 2015.

Bidding farewell to the company he led for more than a decade, Daimler AG Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche urged sweeping cost cuts to prepare the carmaker for unprecedented industry upheaval, Bloomberg News reported. “Everything is under scrutiny,” Zetsche said Wednesday at the annual shareholder meeting in Berlin, citing costs, investments and the Mercedes-Benz maker’s product range.

Expectations for Germany’s medium-term economic development worsened in May, surprising analysts who had expected an improved positive reading, as doubts rose over the economy’s resilience amid challenging global politics, the Financial Times reported. The Zew indicator of economic sentiment fell to minus 2.1 points this month, down from 3.1 in the previous month and 7.1 points off analysts' expectations of 5.0 for the month. The indicator’s long-term average is 22.1 points.