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☆ Fisker's cash tied up in bank guarantees, short-seller report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Dec 1 (Reuters) - Short-seller Fuzzy Panda Research said on Thursday that Fisker Inc's (FSR.N) access to its funds is limited by bank guarantees that set a mininum cash balance, sending the electric-vehicle maker's shares down 5%. In a report disclosing an unspecified short position, Fuzzy Panda Research said nearly all of the $825 million Fisker has in cash "is tied up" in guarantees to its manufacturing partner Magna Steyr, the Austrian unit of Magna International Inc (MG.TO). The guarantees include Fisker paying for Magna's tooling costs as well as manufacturing margins and direct manufacturing costs, the short seller said, citing interviews with former employees. The EV maker is the latest target of Fuzzy Panda Research, which has previously issued reports on EVgo Inc (EVGO.O), Workhorse Group Inc (WKHS.O) and now bankrupt Electric Last Mile Solutions. The short-seller also said that Fisker has been selling shares to raise cash and pay expenses instead of funding operating losses using its cash balance.

☆ French baguette makes it onto World Cultural Heritage list
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

PARIS, Nov 30 (Reuters) - The humble baguette, France's staple bread, has made it onto the United Nation's cultural heritage list. Paris-based U.N. heritage body UNESCO on Wednesday voted to include the "artisanal know-how and culture of baguette bread" on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which already includes around 600 traditions from over 130 countries. This "celebrates the French way of life: the baguette is a daily ritual, a structuring element of the meal, synonymous with sharing and conviviality," said UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay. These days a baguette - which means "wand" or "baton" - is sold for around 1 euro ($1.04) each. ($1 = 0.9645 euros)Reporting by Geert De Clercq and Elizabeth Pineau; Editing by Ingrid Melander and Raissa KasolowskyOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Kronospan's remedies did not address concerns on Polish deal, EU's Vestager says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Foo Yun Chee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

BRUSSELS, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Austrian wood panel maker Kronospan failed to allay EU antitrust concerns over its bid for German wood maker Pfleiderer's Polish unit, EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said on Wednesday after the companies scrapped the deal. The European Commission opened a full-scale investigation into the deal in April and had subsequently planned to veto it, a person familiar with the matter said. The EU competition enforcer said remedies offered by Kronospan failed to ease its concerns over the creation of a dominant player in the raw and melamine-coated particleboards markets in Poland and the Baltics. "As the remedies offered by Kronospan did not address our competition concerns, we could not clear the transaction. We take note of Kronospan's decision to abandon their deal," she said.

☆ Strike brings trains to standstill across Austria
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

The strike affected transport at all levels, from public transport to regional services and long-distance night trains, as well as rail freight lines. The head of the nation's rail network said services would be more or less back to normal by the following day. Wedged between eight countries including Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, Austria is an important hub for European rail travel. The main rail workers' union had called for a 400 euro ($417.88) monthly pay rise for the sector's 50,000 employees. The union called Monday's "warning strike" after a fifth round of negotiations fell through on Sunday.

☆ Austrian rail strike to go ahead on Monday
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

ZURICH, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Austria's rail workers will stage a strike on Monday that will shut down all train traffic throughout the country after last minute pay negotiations fell through. Wedged between eight countries including Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, Austria is an important hub for European rail travel. The main rail workers’ union had called for a 400 Euro pay rise for the sector's 50,000 employees. After the fifth round of negotiations fell through on Sunday, it called the "warning strike" which will last for the whole of Monday and also affect cross-border rail traffic, including night trains. Reporting by Noele Illien; Editing by Frank Jack DanielOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Austrian central bank defends compulsory mortgage-lending standards
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

VIENNA, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Austria should keep its recently introduced compulsory standards for mortgage lending, the Austrian National Bank (ONB) said on Tuesday, despite a recent call by the conservative finance minister for those standards to be reviewed. Faced with a sustained housing boom and banks' widespread flouting of recommendations on mortgage lending aimed at limiting risk, Austria introduced the compulsory standards in August, though banks are still allowed to deviate from them in up to 20% of cases. With interest rates now rising, however, Finance Minister Magnus Brunner has asked that the decision to introduce the compulsory standards be reviewed to make lending easier. "The newly adopted regulation contributes to safeguarding financial stability by curbing excessive developments in residential real estate lending," the ONB said in a statement on its semi-annual Financial Stability Report, referring to the binding standards. The regulation introducing those standards was issued by the Financial Market Authority (FMA), though the standards were developed by the Financial Market Stability Board, which brings together officials from the Finance Ministry, ONB and FMA.

☆ Wall Street's love language is coding. Here are the ones you need to know.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Insider's Bianca Chan and Carter Johnson dug into the most sought-after coding languages across Wall Street. C++, which was created in 1983, is still a mainstay despite being older than a good chunk of the people using it on Wall Street (and the person writing this newsletter). While that's certainly true, plenty of programming languages have sticking power. Perhaps the best example is COBOL, a 63-year-old programming language still being used today. But what would be a smart decision is reading this story mapping out the top programming languages for a variety of roles and industries across Wall Street.

☆ Austria announces windfall tax on energy companies
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Companies Omv Ag FollowVerbund AG FollowVIENNA, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Austria's government on Friday announced plans to introduce a windfall tax on energy companies that will be of up to 40% for oil and gas firms. The tax will apply retroactively from July 1 of this year until the end of next year, it added. The threshold can be increased to 180 euros if those companies invest in renewables, the statement said. Kogler said the tax rate then would be 90%. That tax will apply from Dec. 1 of this year until the end of 2023, the statement said.

☆ European shares bounce as battered miners rise, ECB loan repayments eyed
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Shreyashi Sanyal | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The pan-European STOXX 600 index (.STOXX) rose 0.9%, with basic resources stocks (.SXPP) up 1.2% after falling more than 3% in the last two sessions. The European Central Bank gears up to start the biggest withdrawal of cash from the euro zone's banking system in its history, with banks expected to repay about 500 bln euros in TLTRO loans. The STOXX 600 has gained about 4.9% so far this month, driven by better-than-feared earnings and expectations of smaller rate increases by the Fed. Among individual stocks, Austrian hydropower producer Verbund (VERB.VI) jumped 8.2% to top the STOXX 600, while energy and environmental services provider EVN (EVNV.VI) gained 5.2%. Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu SahuOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Around 60% of Credit Suisse's wealth business is exposure to what it calls growth markets such as the Asia-Pacific region and emerging markets, and the other main part is business with ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs. De Ferrari said some of the best opportunities come in the "high net" business, clients who have $5-25 million to invest. Credit Suisse had been rocked in early October by wild market swings and a social media storm. "Everybody said we love Credit Suisse. Key to wealth management's success as a core business at Credit Suisse is focusing on its offerings and its top 20 markets and exiting from some others, he said.

☆ 'You're going to come back', Hamilton tells retiring Vettel
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Abhishek Takle | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

ABU DHABI, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton said on Thursday that he expected his old rival Sebastian Vettel to make a Formula One comeback. The 35-year-old four-times champion is bowing out of the sport after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday but Hamilton believes the 53-time grand prix race winner will find the lure of F1 hard to resist. "Obviously after the change from Ferrari to Aston Martin at that time it was the first time I really thought it might be the time to stop...," he added. Vettel jokingly suggested he could agree some sort of a swap with Hamilton, who turns 38 in January but is keen on extending his Mercedes deal. "We can make a deal ... when you want to get away, maybe then (I want to come back)," he said.

☆ Climate activists throw liquid at Klimt painting in Vienna
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +3 min

BERLIN — Climate activists in Austria on Tuesday attacked a famous painting by artist Gustav Klimt with a black, oily liquid and one then glued himself to glass protecting the painting’s frame. Members of the group Last Generation Austria tweeted they had targeted the 1915 painting “Death and Life” at the Leopold Museum in Vienna to protest their government’s use of fossil energies. After the attack, police arrived at the museum and the black liquid was quickly cleaned off the glass protecting the painting, Austria Press Agency reported. It’s one of the latest pieces of art to be targeted by climate activists to draw attention to global warming. Just Stop Oil activists also glued themselves to the frame of an early copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and to John Constable’s “The Hay Wain” in the National Gallery.

☆ Climate activists attack glass screen protecting Klimt painting in Vienna
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/4] Gustav Klimt's painting "Tod und Leben" is seen after activists of Last Generation Austria (Letzte Generation Oesterreich) spilled oil on it in Leopold museum in Vienna, Austria, November 15, 2022. Letzte Generation Oesterreich/Handout via REUTERSVIENNA, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Climate-change activists on Tuesday smeared and glued one of their hands to a glass screen protecting a Gustav Klimt painting in a Vienna museum to protest against oil drilling, on a day when entry was free thanks to an oil firm's sponsorship. One of Last Generation Austria's tweets said: "New drilling for oil and gas is a death sentence for humanity." Nonetheless we are shocked that the Leopold Museum was in focus here," the museum's museological director, Hans-Peter Wipplinger, told a news conference. While the museum sympathised with the activists' cause, it disagreed with the means employed, Wipplinger said.

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The company will be a preferred long-term partner for Credit Suisse, the bank has said. Credit Suisse declined to comment beyond Lehmann's remarks Oct. 27 when the bank unveiled the restructuring. The investment bank spin-off and the sale of the securitized products unit to Apollo are key planks of the reorganization. Klein, a 59-year-old former Citigroup rainmaker who runs advisory boutique M. Klein & Co, has been a Credit Suisse board member since 2018. Klein and Credit Suisse also have discussed combining M. Klein & Co into CS First Boston, according to one source familiar with the discussions.

☆ ECB's Holzmann says he doesn't know how he'll vote at December meeting
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

VIENNA, Nov 11 (Reuters) - European Central Bank policymaker Robert Holzmann said on Friday he does not yet know how he will vote at the ECB's rate-setting meeting in December and the exact decision would depend on data, especially the central bank's economic forecasts. "Everything is possible - that we keep going with (a) 0.75 (% increase) but equally that we perhaps will limit ourselves to 0.5. It is all open, everything is possible but it will depend on our forecasts," Holzmann, who is governor of the Austrian National Bank, told an economic reporters' club in Vienna. Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Alex RichardsonOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Insurers face potential losses of up to $60 billion from Hurricane Ian, which ravaged Florida and the Carolinas in September in what could be the second-largest natural catastrophe loss in U.S. history. Zurich sees its overall catastrophe loss ratio for the first nine months around two percentage points above long-term trends. Zurich holds an investor day next week when it will set out its 2023-2025 targets. Quinn said the targets will likely be tougher, after "robust premium increases" helped the insurer's recent performance. Zurich announced a 1.8 billion Swiss franc ($1.83 billion) share buyback programme at half-year results, which Quinn told an earlier media call would likely kick off in the fourth quarter.

☆ Newly discovered photos show Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom up close
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +3 min

JERUSALEM — Harrowing, previously unseen images from 1938′s Kristallnacht pogrom against German and Austrian Jews have surfaced in a photograph collection donated to Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial, the organization said Wednesday. German Nazis ransack Jewish property during Kristallnacht, most likely in the town of Fuerth, Germany, on Nov. 10, 1938. Yad Vashem via APThe violence is widely considered a starting point for the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jews. Firefighters, SS special police officers and members of the general public are all seen in the photos participating in the Kristallnacht. His descendants, who declined to give his name, donated the album to Yad Vashem as part of the institution’s effort to collect Holocaust-era objects kept by survivors and their families.

☆ Southampton due to name Jones as manager - Sky Sports
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

Nov 9 (Reuters) - Southampton have agreed a deal to appoint Nathan Jones as their new manager after sacking Ralph Hasenhuettl earlier this week, Sky Sports reported on Wednesday. Welsh manager Jones, 49, has been in charge of Championship side (second tier) Luton Town since 2020, having also been their manager between 2016 and 2019 before leaving to take over at Stoke City. Austrian manager Hasenhuettl, who was appointed at St Mary's in 2018, was dismissed on Monday, a day after their 4-1 home defeat by Newcastle United which left the team in the relegation zone. Reporting by Richard Martin Editing by Toby DavisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Amy Schumer calls out Ye for antisemitic remarks in SNL monologue
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-06 | by ( Julianne Mcshane | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +3 min

Amy Schumer called out Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, for his antisemitic remarks in her Nov. 5 "Saturday Night Live" monologue. The comedian, 41, called out Ye, 45, in the context of a joke about her husband, Chris Fischer, who she has said has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. His antisemitic comments also led sports brand Adidas, luxury fashion label Balenciaga, Gap and Foot Locker, among others, to end their business relationships with him. The latter restrictions were subsequently lifted, but Ye no long appears to have an active Twitter account. Sometimes, his remarks have included disavowing the diagnosis.

☆ Factbox: Companies count the cost of ditching Russia
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

INDITEX (ITX.MC)Zara owner will book a provision of 216 million euros after agreeing to sell its Russia stores to UAE-based Daher Group. TRATON (8TRA.DE)Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) truck division Traton in September said disposing of some assets in Russia would cause a 550 million euro loss. CREDIT AGRICOLE (CAGR.PA)Credit Agricole provisioned more than 500 million euros related to its Russian exposure in Q1. LINDEThe world's largest industrial gases company's exit from Russia recorded impairments of $993 million from its Russia exit. SIEMENS (SIEGn.DE)The Munich-based engineering and tech firm said in May it would take a 600 million euro hit in Q2 for exiting Russia.

☆ Moody's downgrades outlook for banks in Germany, Italy and elsewhere
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

FRANKFURT, Nov 2 (Reuters) - The ratings agency Moody's said on Wednesday that it had downgraded the outlook for banks in Germany, Italy and four other countries to "negative" from "stable" as the energy crisis and high inflation weaken economies. "We expect operating conditions to deteriorate further," Louise Welin of Moody's said. European banks' shares (.SX7e) have fallen nearly 25% from their highs before Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year. Moody's said it expected weaker bank loan quality, profitability and access to funding. The outlook for British and Austrian banks remained stable, Moody's said.

☆ My 'glamorous' van life involved a lot of sacrifices. Here's how I built it and what it's like working on the road.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Jen Glantz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Mariah Arianna, 30, lives and works out of a van with her partner as a digital nomad. Arianna says even though van life appears glamorous, the lifestyle requires a lot of sacrifices. I was enamored with living life anywhere but home. I was working with a lot of clients in Frankfurt and was able to get a long-term work visa to stay in the country. I usually work in small coffee shops, local libraries, or inside our van, which is very bright and open.

Some of Europe's largest banks have warned of growing risks as the economy fizzles after posting stronger-than-expected profits last week. European banks' shares (.SX7e) have fallen nearly 25% from their highs before Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The outlook for British and Austrian banks remained stable, Moody's said. For Italy, Moody's cited stagflation risks and an expectation that the economy won't grow in 2023 after an expansion of 2.7% in 2022. In Poland, Moody's said banks face a near stagnation in economic growth next year, coupled with a big rise in interest rates and inflation, which will "limit growth opportunities".

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