Germany

For German businessman Ralf Schlesselmann, these are heady times. “We’re totally maxing out,” he says. Mr Schlesselmann runs a 100-year-old family-owned wooden-pallet maker in Asendorf near Hanover that is working almost round the clock to cope with surging orders, the Financial Times reported. “We’re seeing increased demand from all sectors,” he says. “We’re at very close to full capacity.” The humble wooden pallet is an unremarkable thing.

Unsecured creditors of the failed airline Air Berlin should not expect to recover any of their claims, according to an insolvency report on Wednesday. The report, written by insolvency manager and administrators Lucas Floether and Frank Kebekus, said any remaining hope for creditors to recover assets evaporated after Lufthansa scrapped plans to buy Air Berlin's Niki unit for 189 million euros (£165 million), the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Few countries attract as much disdain from economists as Germany. Berlin is accused of running an excessively prudent budget and German companies of paying their workers too little: This stinginess -- so the accusation goes -- has contributed to global instability by making it harder for Germany’s euro-zone partners to climb their way out of the crisis, a Bloomberg View reported.

The German administrator of insolvent airline Niki said he still wanted to sell the leisure carrier to British Airways parent IAG, despite a battle between Austria and Germany over where insolvency proceedings should be handled, Reuters reported. An Austrian court ruled on Friday that the insolvency proceedings should be held there, throwing the deal to sell Niki into doubt.

Germany’s economic outlook is good. So good that corporate dealmakers have reason to be worried. Europe’s largest economy is in the midst of an economic upswing, which by some measures kicked off almost 15 years ago and is already “the longest since the late 1960s”, as Stefan Kreuzkamp, chief investment officer of Deutsche Asset Management, puts it. Last year was the fourth in a row that Germany recorded growth far higher than the country’s long-term potential, which Bundesbank estimates at about 1 per cent, the Financial Times reported in a commentary.

Brexit is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Frankfurt to try to lure global banks away from London — but do not expect Germany’s main financial regulator to be part of a heavy sales pitch. “We are not a marketing agency and not interested in doing industrial policy,” says Felix Hufeld, the president of BaFin, which oversees 1,740 banks in the eurozone’s largest economy.

A Berlin court on Thursday rebuffed a legal challenge to the insolvency filing of airline Niki, which could derail the sale of the Air Berlin unit to Britain’s IAG, and referred the case to a higher court for a ruling, Reuters reported. Niki filed for insolvency in Berlin last month after Germany’s Lufthansa scrapped plans to buy the Austrian unit, grounding the airline’s fleet and stranding thousands of passengers.

The European Commission has approved under the EU Merger Regulation Lufthansa's proposed acquisition of certain Air Berlin assets, through the entity Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter GmbH, according to a press release. The decision is conditional on Lufthansa's compliance with commitments to avoid competition distortions. The Commission decision only concerns Lufthansa's proposed acquisition of LGW. This is because Lufthansa decided to drop the rest of the initially proposed transaction, i.e. its acquisition of NIKI Luftfahrt GmbH, during the course of the Commission's merger review process.

Lufthansa is willing to sacrifice the right to fly some routes to save its deal to acquire assets of Air Berlin, the low-cost airline that collapsed recently, a source familiar with the company’s thinking said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The German carrier will submit its proposed concessions to the European Commission before a midnight deadline, including giving up so-called ‘slots’ belonging to Air Berlin businesses Niki and LG Walter, the source said.

The founding family behind German drugstore chain Schlecker, whose 2,800 stores closed in 2012, were sentenced over the company’s collapse by a German court on Monday, Reuters reported. The founder, 73-year-old former billionaire Anton Schlecker, received a suspended prison term of two years and a 54,000 euro ($64,487) fine for intentional bankruptcy, a milder sentence than the prosecution had demanded.