Insolvent Thomas Cook’s German unit has withdrawn an application for a state bridging loan for legal reasons, the company’s liquidator said on Wednesday, adding that the firm was still talking with investors about a possible rescue, Reuters reported. Insolvency administrators of the law firm Hermann Wienberg said the credit application needed to be amended, adding that the already submitted application would be withdrawn. It did not say whether Thomas Cook would file a new application.

Hundreds of German companies have appealed for more direct support from Brussels and a business-friendly stance from EU lawmakers as they grapple with the effects of Brexit, the US-China trade war and a global economic slowdown, the Financial Times reported. Responding to a poll by the Stiftung Familienunternehmen, or Foundation for Family Businesses, some of the country’s most successful companies said the new European Commission must do more to boost competitiveness. They placed emphasis on simplifying taxes, reducing bureaucracy and deeper digital integration.

UniCredit SpA has told European Central Bank officials that it may create a German holding company to control part of its business, according to people with knowledge of the matter, the Bloomberg News reported. The move could potentially reduce funding costs and help shield the Italian bank from any future crisis in its home country. The plan, which hasn’t been finalized, could be announced at the bank’s Dec. 3 investor day, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the matter is private.

Boris Johnson can seize on Germany’s impending recession to make the most life outside the European Union, a senior financial advisor has said, the Daily Express reported. And Nigel Green, founder and CEO of deVere Group, which claims to be the world’s largest independent financial advisory organisation, also said the UK leaving the EU without a deal could also send the Eurozone into a tailspin.

In a related story, Reuters reported that talks with potential strategic and private equity investors to rescue Thomas Cook’s German tour business going well and many investors have expressed interest in the company as a whole or in its branches, the insolvent company’s liquidator said. “The investor talks are in full swing, running well and giving hope,” Julia Kappel-Gnirs, a liquidator of Thomas Cook Germany’s Bucher Reisen and Oeger Tours units, said in a statement on Wednesday. The travel firm on Wednesday said it was cancelling all travel operations until Dec.

German industrial production rose 0.3 per cent in August, surpassing economists’ forecasts and providing a glimmer of hope that the sharp contraction in the engine room of the eurozone’s biggest economy may be less severe than feared, the Financial Times reported. Excluding the typically volatile energy and construction sectors, production increased by a healthy 0.7 per cent from the previous month, as an increase in intermediate and capital goods more than offset a decline in consumer goods.

German industrial orders have continued their decline, dropping by 0.6 per cent in August from the previous month and adding to the gloom hanging over the eurozone’s biggest economy, the Financial Times reported. Data from Germany’s economy ministry on Monday showed that the country’s larger than expected drop in industrial orders was caused by a sharp fall in domestic demand, which shrank 2.6 per cent. It was only partly offset by a 0.9 per cent rise in foreign orders.

The heated auction between buyout firm Bain Capital and Austria’s AMS AG for the German LED-maker Osram Licht AG has ended in no deal, a Bloomberg View reported. The prospect of a transaction being rekindled in the near term looks bleak — though not impossible over the longer run. It beggars belief that a tense round of bidding can culminate in no more than a tangled mess. But this is regrettably often the way with German M&A.

Business activity in Germany’s services industry worsened more than expected last month, as the woes in the manufacturing sector bled into the greater economy, magnifying fears of a looming recession, the Financial Times reported. The composite purchasing managers’ index for the eurozone’s biggest economy showed a contraction for the first time in six years. The index, a weighted average of manufacturing and services figures, fell below the 50-point level for the first time since April 2013, according to a closely watched poll, and at the swiftest pace of contraction in seven years.

Germany’s leading economic research institutes have urged the government to abandon its commitment to balanced budgets, also known as the “black zero” policy, as they slashed their growth forecasts and warned that the country’s crucial industrial sector was already in recession, the Financial Times reported. “Sticking with the black zero as an end in itself would be fundamentally wrong.