German industrial orders rebounded moderately in May and a fifth of firms in Europe’s biggest economy said in a survey published today that they feared insolvency, adding to expectations of a slow and painful recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reported. Germany has withstood the pandemic better than other big European countries, recording fewer COVID-19 deaths, and its economy has been relatively resilient during more than six weeks of lockdown owing to generous stimulus packages and a decision to keep open factories and construction sites.

Markus Braun built Wirecard AG from an obscure firm based in a small town outside of Munich into a global electronic-payments giant, the Wall Street Journal reported. From its perch at the crossroads of online commerce, Wirecard extracted fees for processing credit-card transactions on behalf of businesses. It pushed into emerging markets, bought up smaller firms and struck partnerships to recruit more customers. In its financial statements, sales and profits ticked steadily upward.

Police and public prosecutors raided Wirecard’s headquarters in Munich and four properties in German and Austria on Wednesday as they widened their investigation into the financial payments company that collapsed last week, Reuters reported. Wirecard filed for insolvency last week owing creditors almost $4 billion after disclosing a 1.9 billion euro ($2.1 billion) hole in its accounts that its auditor EY said was the result of a sophisticated global fraud.

A V-shaped recovery of the German economy from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic is unlikely, with two thirds of companies expecting a return to normalcy in 2021 at the earliest, business association DIHK said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. “The V is off the table,” DIHK said, adding that its survey of 8,500 companies confirms its forecast for a 10% slump in Germany’s economy this year. The association added that four out of five companies expect their sales to decline this year.

The sudden fall of Wirecard has triggered a fallout in the wider payments system, as fintech groups move to distance themselves from partnerships they struck with the troubled German company, the Financial Times reported. Wirecard’s crisis has already affected millions of British savers while raising questions about the oversight of technology companies that claim to disrupt payment systems, which have long been the domain of banks and other financial institutions.

Germany takes the helm of the EU’s rotating presidency on Wednesday with one overriding aim: to rescue the bloc from the worst economic crisis in its history, the Financial Times reported. Chancellor Angela Merkel met French president Emmanuel Macron today to discuss next steps for the €750bn recovery proposals unveiled by the two leaders in May, as well as the EU budget.

Germany’s opposition called on Monday for a parliamentary inquiry into the collapse of payments firm Wirecard after a global fraud that left a gaping hole in its books went undiscovered by auditors and regulators for years, Reuters reported. The request for an inquiry came after Germany said it would cancel its contract with the country’s privately-run accounting watchdog FREP as a result of a scandal that financial regulator BaFin has branded a “total disaster”.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG dodged insolvency. Now Europe’s biggest airline faces the arduous task of transforming itself into a leaner carrier to compete in an air-travel market hamstrung by the coronavirus, Bloomberg News reported. The approval of a 9 billion-euro ($10.1 billion) German bailout concludes weeks of sometimes rancorous negotiations with the government and follows frenzied speculation in recent days over whether billionaire Heinz Hermann Thiele, Lufthansa’s largest shareholder, would scupper the deal. Instead, he backed it.

The German government plans to terminate its contract with the country’s accounting watchdog after payments company Wirecard filed for insolvency last week in one of Germany’s biggest fraud scandals, a government official said on Sunday, Reuters reported. Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported earlier on Sunday that the Justice and Finance Ministries would on Monday cut ties with the Financial Reporting Enforcement Panel (FREP), a quasi-private entity that supervises the financial statements of listed firms.

Wirecard collapsed on Thursday owing creditors almost $4 billion after disclosing a gaping hole in its books that its auditor EY said was the result of a sophisticated global fraud, Reuters reported. The payments company filed for insolvency at a Munich court saying that, with 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) of loans due within a week its survival as a going concern was “not assured”.