Germany

German inflation slowed more than anticipated in December after the government paid some households’ gas bills for the month, offering a temporary respite in the country’s cost-of-living crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer-price growth at 9.6% was the weakest since August. Economists anticipated 10.2%, according to the median of 20 forecasts. The decline to single digits in the main rate masks an increase in food costs across Germany at the end of 2022, aggravating a squeeze on the poorest families and stoking the risk of a wage-price spiral.

German unemployment fell in December, Labour Office figures showed on Tuesday, with the labour market overall being only moderately affected by the war in Ukraine last year, Reuters reported. The Federal Labour Office said the number of people out of work decreased by 13,000 in seasonally adjusted terms to 2.52 million. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected that figure to rise by 15,000. The seasonally adjusted jobless rate remained stable at 5.5%.

The European Commission said on Tuesday it had approved Germany's 34.5 billion euro ($36.60 billion) plan to recapitalise German natural gas trader Uniper, subject to future state divestment, management pay and acquisitions, Reuters reported. The plan complies with EU state aid rules on the necessity, appropriateness and size of the intervention, the Commission said in a statement.

Shareholders in Uniper on Monday approved a state bailout that has so far cost the German government more than 50 billion euros ($53 billion), paving a way for a de facto nationalisation of the struggling gas giant, Reuters reported. Chief Executive Klaus-Dieter Maubach earlier told a virtual extraordinary meeting that the disarray caused by the loss of gas supplies from Russia could leave shareholders with nothing if they did not accept the German proposal.

The key prosecution witness in Germany's biggest post-war fraud trial admitted guilt on Monday in a scam that led to Wirecard's collapse but said the company was a "swindle" from the start, with former chief executive Markus Braun at its core, Reuters reported. Wirecard's downfall two years ago shook the German business establishment, putting politicians who had backed it under intense scrutiny, along with regulators that took years to investigate allegations against the payments company.

After setting aside almost half a trillion dollars to date tackling its energy crisis, Germany is also poised to take on the risks associated with 216 billion euros ($229 billion) of derivatives built up by energy giant Uniper, Reuters reported. Germany is nationalising Uniper in what is the biggest corporate bailout in the country's history, after Russia's move to choke off gas threw Europe's biggest economy into chaos. Uniper has already booked billions of euros of losses on derivatives, exacerbating a crisis as it rushed to plug the gap left after Russia turned off the taps.

German tennis star Boris Becker has returned to Germany after serving eight months in prison in Britain, his lawyer said on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. The 55-year-old German, who has lived in Britain since 2012, was released on Thursday morning and travelled back to Germany shortly thereafter. Becker "has thus served his sentence and is not subject to any penal restrictions in Germany," his lawyer, Christian-Oliver Moser, said in a statement. He did not give additional details about Becker's location in Germany.

Germany's top regulator this week called for global regulation of the cryptocurrency industry to protect consumers, prevent money laundering and preserve financial stability, Reuters reported. Mark Branson, the president of Germany's financial market regulator BaFin, said a hands-off approach that would "just let the industry grow as a playground for grownups" was the wrong tactic. "We've seen the self-regulated world. It will not work," Branson told journalists in Frankfurt on Tuesday evening. Branson was speaking hours after U.S.

Germany is highly dependent on imports for many crucial raw materials and often relies entirely on other countries to meet demand, according to a study seen by Reuters, which warned that much of this reliance was on authoritarian regimes. The DIW research institute identified 30 raw materials as particularly critical and placed Germany's dependence on imports at 100% for 14 of them. For another three, dependency was ranked at over 95%, the DIW said. It classed commodities as critical if they were considered essential but also subject to increased supply risk.