A week after Christian Sewing took charge at Deutsche Bank AG in April, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s newly appointed finance minister, Olaf Scholz, buttonholed the chief executive officer of Germany’s largest lender at an event in Berlin. The 15-minute exchange -- between canapes and ceremonial speeches in a Prussian palace at the German banking association’s annual reception -- marked the start of a rapprochement between Merkel’s government and the embattled financial giant, Bloomberg News reported.

German airline Germania said on Tuesday it had filed for insolvency and would terminate flight operations immediately, citing rising fuel prices and a stronger dollar, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. There were also delays integrating aircraft into the fleet and a high number of "maintenance events", the company said in a statement. CEO Karsten Balke said it was unable to cover a short-term liquidity need. The company advised customers to contact holiday operators to be rebooked.

Business confidence among Germany’s exporters has taken a dive in the past year as any “ray of hope” even a month ago in the carmaking industry has been dashed, figures from an influential research house showed. Export expectations in manufacturing fell to 5.9 points in January, from 19.9 a year ago, the Financial Times reported. The index has more than halved in the past two months, the Ifo Institute’s survey revealed on Monday. In November expectations were at 12.2. “The new year is marked by worries among German manufacturers,” said the report.

German airlines group Lufthansa has held talks to take a majority stake in ailing Italian carrier Alitalia and would be interested in a full takeover in the long run, Lufthansa board member Harry Hohmeister said on Monday, Reuters reported. Alitalia, which was put under special administration in 2017, would remain operationally independent within the Lufthansa group, with its own brand, he said. Lufthansa has been a key player in hectic M&A activity in the industry, snapping up Brussels Airlines and parts of insolvent Air Berlin in 2017 to expand in the budget market.

Europe’s retail crisis deepened as companies in the U.K. and Germany are set to cut thousands of jobs as online shopping accelerates the erosion of sales from traditional bricks-and-mortar stores, Bloomberg News reported. Tesco, the biggest U.K. grocer, will eliminate about 15,000 positions and close meat, fish and delicatessen counters, the Mail on Sunday reported, citing unidentified industry sources.

Germany’s powerhouse manufacturing sector slipped into contraction in January, an early indicator showed, underscoring the extent of the slowdown in the eurozone’s largest economy, the Financial Times reported. The IHS Markit manufacturing purchasing managers' index dropped to 49.9 in January from 51.8 in December, marking its lowest level in more than four years. The gauge fell below the threshold of 50 that separates expansion from contraction and fell far short of a score of 51.3 expected by economists in a Reuters poll.

Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways on Wednesday said it has begun legal proceedings in London, disputing a claim by the administrators of Air Berlin for damages of up to 2 billion euros ($2.26 billion), Reuters reported. State-owned Etihad filed its case in the High Court in London on Wednesday, a company spokesman told Reuters, and believes that the case initiated in December by the German airline in Berlin should be determined by the English court. The insolvency administrator’s lawsuit said that Etihad had not complied with its financial obligations to Air Berlin.

An indicator assessing the state of the German economy fell to a four-year low, while analysts in January revealed a slightly less negative sentiment for their outlook, according to a key survey. The Zew survey’s assessment of the current economic situation in Germany dropped 17.7 points to 27.6 points, the lowest reading since January 2015, the research group revealed on Tuesday, the Financial Times reported.

If you’re looking for one of the worst ideas in contemporary banking, look no further than Germany. The mooted merger between Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG would make a mockery of any notion that EU governments are serious about ending the “too big to fail” problem, a Bloomberg View reported. It would also turn back the clock on a guiding principle of European regulation over the past decade: The promotion of a “banking union,” where risks are shared widely across the continent on the basis of jointly decided rules.

Germany is examining whether it can fix its two largest lenders -- Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG -- by combining them into a national champion that’s once again able to challenge foreign rivals, Bloomberg News reported. History suggests it’s a recipe for more trouble. Spain encouraged the merger of seven failed savings banks into Bankia SA in 2010, only to bail out the combined entity two years later when it collapsed. The U.K. pressed Lloyds Banking Group Plc to swallow failing HBOS Plc in 2008 and a month later had to rescue Lloyds. The U.S.