Good morning, dear readers,
maybe it’s just not a good idea to name a project after a mountain that, according to US statistics, about one in three attempted climbs fail.
In any case, the auditing and consulting company EY has stopped its planned split under the name “Project Everest”. This was announced by the auditing and consulting group formerly known as Ernst & Young on Tuesday evening.
It was actually planned that the 13,000 EY partners should vote in April on the separation of the consulting division. It should then be floated on the stock exchange. However, there was internal resistance, especially from EY USA, the largest of the 145 formally independent EY national companies. This resistance now apparently led to the failure of the project.
Because of the high number of migrants currently arriving in Italy, The Italian government has declared a six-month state of emergency. This allows it to adopt measures by decree and thus avoid the usually lengthy parliamentary process for financing and regulations.
So far this year, the Ministry of the Interior in Rome counted more than 31,000 people who arrived in Italy from North Africa on boats – in the same period last year there were around 7,900. Devastating accidents always occur during the crossings, such as off the coast of Calabria at the end of February with at least 90 dead.
(Photo: IMAGO/ZUMA Press)
On Maundy Thursday, the Handelsblatt Research Institute (HRI) predicted a 0.2 percent decline in economic output for Germany in its 2023 economic forecast. That is significantly more pessimistic than the major economic research institutes, which assume a plus of 0.3 percent for the current year in their joint forecast.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) sees Germany slipping into a slight recession in the current year, with economic output down 0.1 percent. The global economy is “in an extremely uncertain situation,” according to the “World Economic Outlook” published by the IMF on Tuesday. A so-called “hard landing”, the sudden swing into recession or stagnation, has “become a much greater risk,” especially for industrialized nations. The three main causes for the expected slowdown in growth are all related: inflation, rising interest rates, problems at many banks.
The IMF expects global growth of 2.8 percent for the current year, and the global economy is expected to grow by 3.0 percent in 2024.
According to the IMF, the signs point to growth for Russia of all places. For this year and next, he forecasts GDP increases for the country of 0.7 and 1.3 percent, respectively. In other words, Western sanctions don’t seem to be working nearly as well as we’d like.
Yes, I know all the arguments that Russia’s growth is a sham and mostly due to rising military spending. But wasn’t the West’s goal precisely to take away from Vladimir Putin the economic basis for waging war?
After this sobering IMF forecast, before the West adopts further ineffective sanctions packages, we should pause for a moment and ask ourselves: What economic measures can really be used to weaken Putin’s regime?
One of the many oddities of Western sanctions policy is that, two years after the Russian attack on Ukraine, Deutsche Bank still operates IT centers in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Anyway: In the meantime, the largest German credit institution seems to be ready to finally close the centers, as our banking reporter Yasmin Osman found out. Tasks and know-how have largely been transferred to other bank locations, several people familiar with the matter told the Handelsblatt. The employees had received the offer to leave the bank for a severance payment. The offer to move to a location abroad also continues to apply to everyone. The bank does not want to officially confirm it, but in financial circles it is said: It is expected that the number of employees will decrease significantly in the next six months and that the bank will then shut down the Russian IT centers.
Well, better late than never.
(Photo: AP)
When doing business with autocratic and aggressive states, there is a wide nebula between “ethically safe” and “clearly forbidden” for companies, which requires a well-calibrated moral compass to navigate. This is also shown by another Handelsblatt research: Siemens apparently supplies simulation software to China, which ultimately helps to upgrade the local military there. It’s not forbidden, according to Siemens.
And then there is the US plastic can company Tupperware, which is stuck in the worst crisis in its history.
Company boss Miguel Fernandez had to admit that the continuation of business operations was uncertain due to liquidity bottlenecks. According to Neil Saunders, retail researcher at analyst firm Global Data Retail, the company has failed to sufficiently innovate the direct selling model and attract younger buyers.
But isn’t it rather a wonder how long the company’s success story has lasted? In 1949, it began with the invention of the airtight plastic container by Earl S. Tupper and received a decisive boost with the idea of the saleswoman Brownie Wise to sell the bowls at sales parties.
Decades of success are a miracle for me because, as is well known, the bowls and bowls never break and tumble like lemmings out of every kitchen cupboard in the western hemisphere when you’re looking for a raclette grill on New Year’s Eve.
The market for Tupperware should have been decades ago where the Hinkelstein market is at the end of the key work “Obelix GmbH & Co. KG”, critical of capitalism: Destroyed by absolute market saturation.
I wish you a day where you hold on to your hunger.
Best regards
Your Christian Rickens
Editor-in-Chief Handelsblatt
