Economy

Oil prices jumped about 6% on Wednesday after a ship ran aground in the Suez Canal, and worries that the incident could tie up crude shipments gave prices a boost after a slide over the last week. The situation is affecting the connections of other ships that carry oil and may now have to look for alternative routes, reveals "Bloomberg" this Wednesday, March 24th.

The Evergreen container with 400 meters in length and 220 thousand tons was stranded when making the connection between China and the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, worthless the several attempts to get it afloat again.

Disney has announced it will be closing 20% of its 300 retail stores in North America by the end of the year, hinting at additional closures and layoffs in the future. As the company closes its brick-and-mortar stores, it is working to improve its e-commerce business ShopDisney.

For the first time since 1979, the German Bundesbank does not distribute profits. This was reported by Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann at the central bank's annual press conference on Wednesday.

The monetary crisis measures in the Corona pandemic have had a significant impact on the Bundesbank's balance sheet, the institution reported. In light of the associated risks, the bank is increasing its risk provisioning, it said

"The increased risk provisioning is the main reason why the Bundesbank is reporting a balanced annual result for 2020 and is not distributing a profit for the first time since 1979," Weidmann said at the presentation of the annual financial statements. In the previous year, the profit distribution had amounted to 5.9 billion euros.

The company put a statement on their website that due to ongoing difficulties from Covid-19 and changing consumer habits, they were forced to make the difficult decision to cease operations and close their retail locations permanently.

Credit card company Mastercard has announced that it will enable transactions with cryptocurrencies in the future - pushing the bitcoin price, which has been rising for weeks, even higher.

Bitcoin rose to a new all-time high of $48,481. This means that bitcoin is taking aim at the round mark of 50,000 US dollars for the first time.

The company said it bought the bitcoin for "more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash," according to the filing. In addition to the purchase, Tesla said it would start accepting payments in bitcoin in exchange for its products as well.

The move raised immediate questions around CEO Elon Musk's behavior on Twitter recent weeks, where he has been credited for increasing the prices of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and dogecoin by posting positive messages about them and therefore encouraging more people to buy.

Amazon's quarterly figures have just been published. Here are the most important key figures:

Revenue is $125.56 billion (year-ago quarter $87.4/expected $119.7).

Earnings per share are $14.09 (prior-year quarter $6.47/expected $7.23).

For the current ongoing quarter, revenue is now expected to be $100-106 billion.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) delivered $12.74 billion in revenue (prior year $10/expected 12.8 today).

The stock is trading at -0.4 percent in after-hours trading.

Apple has reported a 21% increase in revenue year over year counting a record revenue of $111.4 billion.

Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO, has stated that "Our December quarter business performance was fueled by double-digit growth in each product category, which drove all-time revenue records in each of our geographic segments and an all-time high for our installed base of active devices,"

German government criticizes the permanent blocking of Trump's social media accounts. Merkel pointed out that freedom of expression as a fundamental right should only be restricted by legislation and not by companies.

In principle, the German government condemns statements inciting hatred and violence and is in favor of regulating social networks.

For the first time in years, the EU's common currency has overtaken the dollar as an international currency. The British pound is by far the third most frequently used means of payment.

Following an evaluation of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Telecommunications (SWIFT) the demand for the euro as an international means of payment has increased significantly during the pandemic.

According to SWIFT, about 37.8 percent of all money transfers worldwide in October were in euros. This was six percentage points more than at the turn of the year. During the same period, the dollar's share fell by 4.6 percentage points to 37.5 percent.

British multinational budget airline easyJet has reported a £835 million loss in the year to 30 September 2020, compared to £427 million in profits in 2019. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, both easyJet's revenue and passenger numbers declined by approx. 50%,

"I am immensely proud of the performance of the easyJet team in facing the challenges of 2020. We responded robustly and decisively, minimising losses, reducing cash burn and launching the largest cost out and restructuring programme in our history – all while raising more than £3.1 billion in liquidity to date," so chief executive, Johan Lundgren

Wirecard's insolvency administrator Michael Jaffé has stated in a press release that they have "been able to successfully conclude the investor process for Wirecard's core business despite the most unfavorable conditions" by selling Wirecard's core business to the major Spanish bank Santander, They have acquired the European core business of the payment service provider Wirecard specifically the technology platform in Europe and all the assets necessary for it.

15 countries have formed the world's largest trading bloc.

It is named 'RCEP', short for 'Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership'. The countries involved include 10 Southeastern Asian companies, South Korea, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

The long road to this point started back in 2012. The US was excluded from the deal after pulling out of a rival Asia-Pacific deal in 2017.

The deal was confirmed by each individual country signing copies of the trade agreement, and then showing it to a camera in a virtual ceremony.

In a report called “What we must do to rebuild”, Deutsche Bank suggests slapping a 5% daily tax on people who work from home and using the funds raised to subsidise the lowest-paid workers who are unable to work remotely.

Working from home meant that many people were saving on everyday costs such as travel, lunch, clothes and cleaning, as well as probably spending less on socializing. Subsidizing businesses that had no long-term future in this shift toward "human disconnection" made no sense for governments, Templeman said, but supporting workers who had been "displaced by forces out outside their control". At the same time, they retrain or figure out their next steps did.

Bitcoin rose on Wednesday by up to four percent to 14,274.53 dollars and was thus as expensive as last time during the hype at the turn of the year 2017/2018. In June, the Bitcoin supply has also been reduced by the so-called "halving" - for the third time in the history of the digital currency.

PayPal has announced that cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin will in the future be supported by their services and will enable users to buy, hold and sell digital currencies through their platform.

PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman has stated that "our global reach, digital payments expertise, two-sided network, and rigorous security and compliance controls provide us with the opportunity, and the responsibility, to help facilitate the understanding, redemption and interoperability of these new instruments of exchange".

The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday filed an antitrust suit against Alphabet Inc, Google's parent company, in which it accuses of violating the law by abusing its dominant market position over its competitors. This is the most important legal offensive against a technological giant in at least two decades, and represents the culmination of a year-long investigation that concludes that the company took advantage of its dominant position in the search and advertising market to the detriment of competitors and consumers.

In order to focus on new high-margin businesses, such as cloud services and AI, IBM will split into two public companies. The company's legacy IT infrastructure work will be handled by a new spin-off company.

The split is expected to be completed by the end of 2021 and following IBM's projections the new spin-off company will be the world's "leading managed infrastructure service provider" with around 90,000 employees, while the remaining of the 352,000 current employees will stay with the main company.

The Coronavirus pandemic could push as many as 150 million people into poverty by 2022, living on less than $1.90 a day, the World Bank said Wednesday. The number is depending on the severity of the economic impact of Coronavirus. Regions most affected will be countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Poverty will also affect more educated and urban residents.

The European Central Bank is currently preparing a concept for an official digital currency that would complement hard cash as a payment method. "Towards the middle of 2021 we will decide whether to launch a digital euro project." states the official website of the project.

Reuters report that home rental company Airbnb is aiming to raise around $3 billion in its upcoming initial public offering. Back in August, the company announced it had filed confidentially for the IPO.

The company aims to achieve a valuation of more than $30 billion in the IPO, a value substantially higher than the $18 billion Airbnb was valued at in April.

In a memo sent to employees on Tuesday, Disney announced it would lay off 28,000 employees across its parks, experiences and consumer products segment. Around 67% of the laid-off workers were part-time employees.

The company blamed prolonged closures and capacity limits at open parks for the layoffs. While Disney's theme parks in Florida, Paris, Shanghai, Japan and Hong Kong have been able to reopen with limited capacity, both California theme parks have remained shuttered.

According to a union official, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has left the British low-cost airline group EasyJet "hanging by a thread".

"If easyJet don’t have a good summer and make money next summer, I suspect none of us will have a job this time next year," pilots’ union official Martin Entwisle said in a now leaked recording of an EasyJet staff conference call. Entwisle claimed the information was shared by the company’s chief financial officer, Andrew Findlay, who allegedly warned that the company's situation was "even worse than their worst fears."

"The easiest way to put it is: the company is hanging by a thread," Entwisl added.

EasyJet has denied that Entwisl's comments "reflect what EasyJet or its finance officer said."

According to reports by Bloomberg, the investment bank JPMorgan Chase & Co. is moving assets worth around €200 billion from the United Kingdom to Frankfurt, Germany. The reason for the move is the end of the transition period and the Brexit with the United Kingdom leaving the European Union.

The Spanish Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the riders are wage earners and are therefore now working as falsely self-employed. "The relationship between a rider and Glovo is of a labor nature," says the note issued by the Supreme Court, which adds that the company "is not a mere intermediary in the hiring of services between stores and rider"

Facebook will open its second African office in Lagos, Nigeria in 2021 to support the Sub-Saharan region, the company said in a statement.

“The opening of our new office in Lagos, Nigeria presents new and exciting opportunities in digital innovations to be developed from the continent and taken to the rest of the world," the Head of New Product Experimentation Ime Archibong said. “All across Africa we’re seeing immense talent in the tech ecosystem, and I’m proud that with the upcoming opening of our new office, we’ll be building products for the future of Africa, and the rest of the world, with Africans at the helm. We look forward to contributing further to the African tech ecosystem.”

Spanish banks CaixaBank and Bankia teams agreed to a merger that would create an entity with total assets of about 665 billion. Reuters reports that sources close to the deal confirmed the main shareholders greenlight the merger, to be signed in the next few days.

The new bank would surpass Santander and BBVA in the Spanish market with a combined market share of around 30%. Both Santander and BBVA would remain bigger globally, but not in Spain.

The Austrian car sales are heavily impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to a -67% and -65% decline in sales in March and April. The market since then recovered to a low of -18% in June and went back to -20% in August.

The statistics are based on the registration number of new cars per month.

According to a report from the consultancy Ernst & Young out of 58 Austrian companies that are publically traded at the stock exchange, only 13 have a female board member. In total out of 191 board members, only 14 are female.

Every fourth company does not fulfill the quorum of 30%.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Brazil had a historical fall of 9.7% in the 2nd quarter, in comparison with the first 3 months of the year, due to the impact of the coronavirus crisis,

With a pandemic, the Brazilian economy regressed to the level of late 2009.