European workers squeezed by the soaring cost of living went on strike in Belgium and Greece on Wednesday, with stoppages threatening to paralyse parts of Britain, France and Spain in coming days.. Belgium and Greece saw general strikes on Wednesday, disrupting transport in their respective capitals, impacting businesses.
Wirecard's former CEO Markus Braun will go on trial from December 8 to answer fraud charges in Germany's biggest-ever accounting scandal, a Munich court said Wednesday.. The higher regional court in Munich said it had scheduled 100 court dates for the mammoth trial.
Facebook owner Meta will lay off more than 11,000 of its staff in "the most difficult changes we've made in Meta's history", boss Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday.. Zuckerberg renamed the company to Meta a year ago to reflect the commitment to the project, but the division working on metaverse technology has since made losses of more than $3.5 billion.
India's Tata Motors announced a seventh consecutive quarter of losses Wednesday as chip shortages and weak demand in export markets hurt sales.. But Tata Motors said "improving chip supply and cooling commodity prices" will aid business recovery in the quarters ahead.
The International Monetary Fund said Wednesday it reached a preliminary agreement to provide Bangladesh with a $4.5 billion support package to help it cope with soaring energy and food prices.. An IMF delegation and Dhaka representatives "reached a staff-level agreement to support Bangladesh's economic policies" with a total of $4.5 billion under various facilities, the institution said in a statement, adding the deal was subject to IMF management approval.
Even for a sector regularly rocked by bankruptcies, the collapse of FTX –- a cryptocurrency platform worth $32 billion at the beginning of the year -- came as a shock. . "This is another black eye for the industry," said David Holt, a cryptocurrency industry expert at CFRA. Other spectacular collapses this year include virtual currency terra, which was supposed to be pegged to the US dollar, and cryptocurrency investment platform Celsius.
European wholesale gas prices have fallen from record peaks reached after producer Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but energy bills remain sky high despite government help aimed at easing consumers' pain.. But consumers still face unusually high bills, even if the worst of the winter has yet to come in the northern hemisphere.
China announced Wednesday hundreds of new orders for its first domestically manufactured large passenger jet, with the aircraft poised to make its commercial debut early next year.. The company began producing its A321 model in the eastern city of Tianjin on Wednesday with a view to making deliveries early next year, according to Xinhua.
A slew of lacklustre indicators for October show strict and enduring Covid curbs as well as a global slowdown are dragging on China's economy, analysts told AFP, with prospects looking increasingly grim for 2023.. But others expect grim trends to continue, with Macquarie analysts telling AFP that "due to the softening global economy" they expect China exports to decline by five percent in 2023.
Nissan on Wednesday upgraded its full-year profit forecasts, as the depreciating yen helps inflate its overseas profits, despite ongoing challenges including Covid shutdowns and the global chip shortage.. He said the business environment was expected to "remain challenging" in the second half of the year, with ongoing semiconductor shortages and increased raw material prices.
