Germany slashed the volume of federal debt sales planned for the fourth quarter by €31 billion ($33 billion) as the government winds down financial support for households and companies hit by soaring energy costs, Bloomberg News reported. Bond issuance will be cut by €8 billion and sales of bills by €23 billion compared with a plan published last December, the federal finance agency said Tuesday in an emailed statement. Together with the reduction in the third quarter, that would trim total sales for this year by €45 billion to about €500 billion, still a record.

German bonds tumbled to send the government’s benchmark borrowing costs to the highest in over a decade, as investors bet on European interest rates remaining elevated for longer, Bloomberg News reported. The yield on 10-year securities jumped eight basis points to 2.78%, the highest since 2011. The latest move up follows hawkish messaging by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday and strong US labor data Thursday, leading traders to expect the European Central Bank will keep policy tight for years.

The German government and European politicians in Brussels are leaning on Germany’s largest companies to reduce their exposure to China. The companies are instead doubling down, the Wall Street Journal reported. As government pressure intensifies, German companies with sizable Chinese operations in recent months have been scrambling to insulate those businesses from possible Western sanctions.

The car manufacturer B-ON, which had taken over Streetscooter, among others, is apparently bankrupt, Electrive.com reported. The group has now filed for insolvency at the Aachen District Court and put the production of the Streetscooter on hold. It is unclear how the imbalance came about. The company had orders, said Jürgen Müller, chairman of the works council, to the Aachener Zeitung. The business figures for the past year presented in April also looked good at first.

Building permits for apartments in Germany fell 31.5% in July from a year earlier, the statistics office disclosed on Monday, highlighting a slump in demand plaguing the construction and real estate industry, Reuters reported. The nosedive in permits comes amid calls from firms for stimulus from Berlin to support the industry ahead of a meeting next week with Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The statistics office attributed the decline in demand to high building costs and difficulties in getting financing, factors that have deepened stress across the broader sector.

More than 8,000 businesses in Germany have gone bust this year, according to recent data released by the Federal Statistical Office, TheLocal.de reported. In August of this year, the number of regular insolvency proceedings filed increased by 13.8 percent compared to the same month the previous year. This follows a 23.8 percent increase reported in July 2023. The Wiesbaden-based agency said it was important to note that proceedings are included in official statistics only after the initial decision by the insolvency court, which often comes three months after the insolvency application date.

Investor confidence in Germany’s economy improved for a second month, while lingering at a level that will do little to dispel intensifying concerns over the country’s status as Europe’s growth laggard, Bloomberg News reported. The ZEW institute’s gauge of expectations rose to -11.4 in September from -12.3 in August. While that’s better than economists in a Bloomberg survey had predicted, it’s still well below a longer-term average for the indicator. An index of current conditions worsened to -79.4.

Germany’s embattled economy, once Europe’s main engine of growth, looks set for a fresh contraction as its all-important manufacturing sector continues to weaken, the Wall Street Journal reported. After stagnating since the end of last year, Germany’s output is likely to contract this quarter as its factories face higher energy costs, a less welcoming global marketplace and intense competition from China in key sectors, recent data shows. The country was hit hard by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused a surge in energy and food prices.

German inflation fell only slightly in August, data showed on Wednesday, but economists expect the downward trend in headline inflation to gain pace in the coming months, Reuters reported. Consumer prices, harmonised to compare with other European Union countries, increased by 6.4% on the year this month, according to preliminary data from the federal statistics office. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast harmonised annual inflation of 6.3% after a reading of 6.5% in July.

Inflation slowed less than expected in Germany and quickened in Spain, offering European Central Bank officials a partial picture of the region’s price pressures as they judge whether to raise interest rates again, Bloomberg News reported. The numbers published Wednesday point to the possibility of a robust outcome when the euro-zone report is released the following day — data policymakers have highlighted as crucial to their Sept. 14 decision. Consumer prices in Germany, the region’s biggest economy, rose 6.4% in August from a year earlier.