Ryanair to appeal against Lufthansa aid package

South America’s biggest airline Latam sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it grapples with the sharp downturn in air travel sparked by the pandemic. Latam has joined other airlines like Colombia’s Avianca and Virgin Australia in bankruptcy protection as it seeks to restructure its debt. The filing includes Latam Airlines Group SA and its affiliated airlines in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador

Germany’s top court has ruled that Volkswagen must pay compensation to a motorist who had bought one of its diesel minivans fitted with emissions-cheating software. The carmaker must take back the plantiff’s car and pay him €28,257.74, in a case that will lead to the company paying compensation to 60,000 German VW owners. Volkswagen admitted in 2015 to cheating emissions tests on diesel engines.

A $9.8 billion aid package was approved by Germany, which will reportedly help stricken airline Lufthansa as it goes through the turbulence of the coronavirus pandemic. However, officials have maintained that the government of Germany is still in talks with the executive commission of the European Union about possible conditions.

A cafe in Daejeon, South Korea has taken assistance of a robot barista to ensure social distancing while serving the customers. The system, which uses a coffee-making robotic arm and a serving robot, can make 60 different types of coffee and serves the drinks to customers at their seats.

Moderna’s stock surged ~30% on Mon after the company announced promising early results for its Covid-19 vaccine. However as investors gathered, Moderna’s CFO & CMO executed options and sold nearly $30mn shares jointly on Mon and Tuesday, SEC filings confirmed. However Moderna clarified that these transactions were automatically executed under 10b5-1 trading plans which were well-known in advance.

The government has authorised a plan allowing the bailout of firms considered strategically important to prevent them going under as a result of the pandemic.Under the plan — dubbed ’Project Birch — Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has increased the Treasury’s capacity to handle bailouts on a case-by-case basis of viable companies, whose failure will ’disproportionately harm the economy’.

Aston Martin confirmed Tuesday that Tobias Moers, CEO of Mercedes-AMG, would become chief executive on August 1, replacing Andy Palmer who stepped down on Monday. Aston Martin was struggling before the coronavirus crisis hit sales and its share price was down 94% since the company’s flotation in 2018. The news however raised the shares of the financially troubled British car maker more than 30%.

Jaguar Land Rover, UK’s largest auto manufacturer is in talks with government to borrow more than £1 billion ($1.2 billion) through the UK’s emergency coronavirus lending program. Owner Tata Motors Ltd. may be required to back part of the UK government loan to secure the funding.

Tech giant IBM announced that it’s laying off undisclosed number of workers across US. These would be IBM’s first big layoffs under incumbent CEO Arvind Krishna, who on April 6 replaced Ginni Rometty.

US Labor Department released a report showing that more than 20% of American workforce filed for unemployment due to the spread of the Covid-19 virus all across the United States. Moreover, unemployment rose all across the nation, the most affected states being Nevada and Michigan with more than 23% of workforce filing for unemployment.

Hertz Global Holdings filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday. Burdened with about $19 billion in debt and nearly 700,000 vehicles that have been largely idled because of the coronavirus, the company had challenges even before the current economic crisis.

Impostors from a Nigerian fraud ring have used the stolen information of tens of thousands of people in Washington to fraudulently receive unemployment benefits. The state’s Employment Security Department head Suzi LeVine confirmed an investigation. LeVine said she can’t release specific numbers but countermeasures ’prevented hundreds of millions of additional dollars from going out’.

While a new report touts that the net worth of US billionaires has increased by $434 B during the pandemic, an analysis by MarketWatch has revealed otherwise. For a start, the period of study has been March 18 and May 19. Instead MarketWatch studied the net worth from the Feb. 19 peak in the market till Tues. this week. Cumulatively, the top 50 billionaires lost $232 billion during this time.

Nearly 15 million credit cards, or about 3.2% of the US’ accounts, were either frozen, in forbearance or had a deferred payment in April, according to credit-reporting company TransUnion. The same was true for almost 3 million, or 3.5%, of the nation’s auto loans. Last year in April, only 0.03 percent of credit cards and 0.5 percent of auto loans were in similar situation, the company said.

About 2,500 jobs have been lost and 64,000 bookings cancelled with the insolvency of Specialist Leisure Group. The UK based company operated Caledonian Travel and hotel businesses such as Bay Hotels, Coast and Country Hotels and Country Living Hotels and well-known coach holiday brands Shearings and National Holidays.

The UK govt borrowed a record amount in April, adding £62.1bn to the country’s budget deficit, £51.1bn higher than the same month last year. The figure is twice as high than expected. It comes amid efforts by the govt to prevent job losses from the pandemic by furloughing many of the country’s workers. Public debt jumped to almost 98% of GDP - the highest share of GDP by that measure since 1963.

FB CEO Zuckerberg said half of its employees could be working remotely within next five to 10 years, and FB will allow certain employees to WFH on a full-time basis. However such employees will have to inform FB by Jan. 1 and their pay would be adjusted to the respective taxes and accounting of relocation. He also warned of severe ramifications for employees being dishonest in this WFH process.

19 Ikea stores are set to be reopened across England and Northern Ireland. The retailer has announced that the stores will reopen on the 1st of June and new social distancing measures will be put into effect. Each and every store will be patrolled by social distancing wardens according to the homeware chain.