Finance

All around 120 employees will be taken over, MAN is also looking for buyers for the plant in Steyr in Upper Austria.

A MAN truck.

The ailing Volkswagen subsidiary MAN has found a buyer for its plant in Plauen, Germany, which is threatened with closure. The truck manufacturer announced on Monday that the system was going to the special vehicle manufacturer Binz. In addition to the systems, the German company will also take over all employees.

MAN is currently looking for a buyer for the location in Steyr, Upper Austria, and negotiations are ongoing. 2,200 employees in Steyr would be affected by the closure.

The plant in Plauen is much smaller. According to a MAN works council, around 120 employees there are affected by the sale. The ailing truck manufacturer announced in September that it would close the plant, where buses and vans have been converted for a wide variety of purposes. Among other things, Binz builds ambulances and vehicles for the fire brigade.

Binz shareholder Cathrin Wilhelm said she was confident of securing jobs in the region in the long term. The sale should take effect on April 1st.

As part of the VW commercial vehicle division Traton, MAN belongs to the VW Group. In terms of returns, however, MAN lags far behind its Swedish sister brand Scania. MAN's problems had worsened in the corona crisis. Last year sales fell by more than a fifth.

Stock exchange traders see the pandemic's peak as over

Investor sentiment continued to improve in March. As the analysis company Sentix announced on Monday in Frankfurt, the economic indicator it had collected rose by 5.2 points to 5.0 points. This is the highest level in over a year. The assessment of the situation brightened particularly significantly. The expectation component rose only slightly.

Sentix explained the improvement mainly with the hope of investors that the economic recovery from the Corona slump will continue. The pandemic is likely to have peaked on a global level, says the analysis company. Investors are therefore betting on opening up the economy.

In addition, the economic recovery process will continue to be supported by the loose monetary and fiscal policy. “This and the likely pent-up demand that is expressed in the current high savings rates, however, clouded the inflation outlook considerably from the point of view of investors.” The corresponding indicator points to significant inflation risks.

The Czech energy company (CEZ) has received approval from the National Atomic Energy Agency (SUJB) to place two new reactors at the Dukovany nuclear power plant. This was announced by the CEZ spokesman Ladislav Kriz on Monday. The approval applies to two reactors with an output of up to 1,200 megawatts each, it said. The South Moravian nuclear reactor is only about 50 kilometers from the Austrian border. The Greens in Austria expressed harsh criticism.

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According to Kriz, this is one of the most important preparatory steps before selecting the technology supplier and before starting construction. It took five years to write the documentation, which contains over 200 studies and analyzes. The SUJB boss Dana Drabova said that the assessment had not revealed any facts that would stand in the way of the approval.

Martin Litschauer, anti-nuclear spokesman for the Austrian Greens, spoke on Monday of an extremely bad deal for the Czech population. Nuclear electricity is already up to five times as expensive as electricity from modern renewable sources. In addition, nuclear power also has significant CO2 emissions in the value chain, which should not be made small. “I consider the signals in the direction of expansion to be fatal in terms of a nature-friendly, risk-minimizing and economically sensible energy turnaround,” explained Litschauer.

Although the SUJB approval affects two reactors, the construction of only one reactor is currently planned. However, this is always delayed. According to the government's plans, the first new reactor should go online between 2035 and 2037. The costs for this are estimated at up to 7.5 billion euros. The order has not yet been awarded.

So far, no selection process has been started, although it was planned until the end of 2020. There is also a dispute as to whether Russian and Chinese companies should also take part in the tender. The right-wing liberal opposition in particular sees this as a political security risk.

There are currently four reactors in operation there that are more than 30 years old. The state intends to finance 70 percent of the expansion of Dukovany. The remaining 30 percent and any additional costs are to be borne by the Czech energy company (CEZ), 70 percent of which is owned by the state. Austria has protested several times against plans to expand Dukovany. Environmentalists criticize the safety of the plant and consider the pressurized water reactors of the Russian type VVER-440/213 to be out of date. The Dukovany nuclear power plant currently covers around a fifth of Czech electricity consumption. The Czech government in Prague wants to increase the share of nuclear power to more than half by 2040.

The construction of the Jewish Museum MiQua in Cologne is progressing: on Monday, the first of 15 roof pyramids was erected to complete the first construction phase. Representatives of the city of Cologne spoke of “one of the most exciting construction sites in Germany at the moment”. In the anniversary year “1700 years of Jewish life in Germany”, the interest in the project could hardly be greater. The museum should be ready in 2024. It presents the re-excavated medieval Jewish quarter of Cologne.

Image: APA (dpa)

A Jewish community has been documented in Cologne since the year 321, making it the oldest north of the Alps. In 1349 the quarter was destroyed; its residents were murdered or driven out. The Jews were then blamed for the outbreak of the plague.

After the opening, visitors to the museum will be able to relive life in the Jewish quarter during the time of the knights and minstrels on a 600-meter-long course – and also the governor's palace from Roman times, which was rediscovered in the 1950s and which is right next to it. The museum is named MiQua after the name of the Jewish ritual bath, mikveh. According to current planning, the construction costs amount to 95 million euros.

The exhibits will include many artifacts found during the excavations. Below is a crescent-shaped, gem-studded gold earring from the 11th century.

(SERVICE -)

In Austria, too, around 7,500 Microsoft Exchange servers are unprotected in the network – and have therefore probably already been attacked.

It reads like a thriller, but the effects could prove to be fatal: Around 7,500 Microsoft Exchange servers in Austria could have been compromised and consequently susceptible to ransomware attacks or data theft. This is what the Austrian National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT.at) assumes, as a blog entry shows.

“It can be assumed that all Microsoft Exchange servers that are accessible from outside could already be affected,” says Otmar Lendl, head of the CERT.at team, in an interview with futurezone. The reason: Microsoft made a patch available relatively quickly, i.e. a way to fill the gap, but at this point in time the attacks were already in full swing – and still are. So the situation is serious, quite serious. Exchange is widespread in Austria, from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to public authorities and large companies.

What happened?

But first things first: On March 2nd, the first companies reported that they had exploited a zero-day security hole in open Microsoft Exchange servers. “Zero Day” means that the vulnerability is exploited on the same day that it is discovered.

During the night Microsoft released the emergency patch that companies could use to close the gap. But for many companies it was too late by then and their systems had already been compromised. Because the vulnerability has already been actively exploited.

All unprotected Microsoft Exchange servers are affected

Who and what was the goal?

At first it was suspected that it was mainly about targeted attacks on a few companies in the USA. Security researcher Brian Krebs reported that “at least 30,000 organizations” in the US were affected. But in the meantime it has turned out that the dimensions were far larger from the start.

The attacker's goal is not only to gain control of the victims' emails, but also to access the company's network infrastructure via the authorizations and to settle in there. “In the beginning, the attackers placed webshells. These are small web applications, but they are enough for attackers to be able to set foot in the door of a system and gain full access, ”explains Lendl in an interview with futurezone.

“But it is also possible to use this attack to bring out heavier artillery pieces and to paralyze systems immediately with ransomware attacks, for example, or to steal data,” says Lendl. “That worries me a lot at the moment, because the thousands of systems in Austria are vulnerable in this regard,” says the IT expert. “And that would really hurt quickly.”

The IT departments of companies that operate open Exchange servers have a lot to do.

What should companies do now?

Lendl recommends to those companies that have not yet fixed the security gap to do so “with high urgency”. “It's urgent,” says the expert. If this is not possible with a system, it must be disconnected from the network immediately, according to the CERT.at expert. In order to apply the patches from Microsoft, the script needs full system rights, ergo, the patch can only be applied by authorized IT administrators.

“Since the mass exploitation began extremely shortly after the patches were available, it cannot be assumed that quickly patching your own Exchange server prevented an infection,” says Lendl. In any case, it is possible to determine whether you have actually already caught malware and the system has been compromised. To determine this, you have to activate a Microsoft script that looks through the log files.

“There are also other scripts that you can use to check whether there are webshells on them,” says Lendl. “But I'm a bit skeptical here. If you can't find anything, that doesn't mean the system is secure. Just because the first attackers selected webshells as a method does not mean that other attackers will compromise the system in the same way, ”says the IT expert. If an attack is detectable, Lendl recommends contacting his “IT specialists” as soon as possible.

What does it mean when a system stays open?

An old analysis by CERT.at also shows that the situation is serious. A serious security flaw was discovered in 2019 that made Microsoft Exchange servers vulnerable. Around a third of the open servers in Austria are still vulnerable. This means: 33 percent of the systems have not yet been updated. “If you operate Microsoft Exchange Server seriously, you should secure the systems using VPN,” says Lendl. Everything else is negligent.

Which countries are affected?

But not only Austria is affected. In Germany, for example, the BSI boss Arne Schönbohm warned of what could happen if the systems were not secured soon. Therefore, the security warning level 4 (red) was issued. That is the highest warning level there is. According to Zeit.de, this has only been announced for the second time so far. Data and know-how could leak to attackers, and production plants could come to a standstill. Germany expects “thousands of open systems” and there are also “first indications that individual federal authorities are affected,” as Die Zeit reports.

It was also announced on Monday that the European Banking Authority (EBA) had already been compromised. Personal information from the emails was read, it is said. The incident is currently being investigated. In the meantime, the EBA's e-mail systems have been taken offline for security reasons.

According to Kaspersky, apart from the USA, organizations in Europe in particular were hit hardest from the start. Kaspersky analyzed “related attacks” at the beginning of March and found that Austria was one of the most affected countries alongside Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The “related attacks” affected Germany to 26.93 percent, Italy to 9 percent, Austria to 5.72 percent, Switzerland to 4.81 percent and the USA to 4.73 percent, the report says.

What else will happen?

The zero-day vulnerability continues to be massively exploited and many security researchers regard both the systems that have not yet been protected and those that have already been infiltrated as “ticking time bombs”.

New customers permanently pay 20 percent less. There is also no registration fee.

If you now switch to three, you can save 20 percent of the monthly costs. This applies to current smartphone tariffs, regardless of whether the new registration is made with a smartphone or SIM-only.

To do this, enter the code Promo20 in the web shop. The cheapest “Perfect SIM S” tariff (unlimited telephony and SMS, 1 GB data) then costs around 7.92 euros instead of 9.90. “Perfect SIM L” (unlimited telephony and SMS, 20 GB data) is reduced from 23.90 euros per month to 19.12 euros per month with the code.

There is no activation fee

The discount is permanent and not only for the first year, as is the case with similar offers from other mobile operators. In addition, there is no activation fee of 60 euros and phone number portability is free. The service fee of 27 euros has to be paid.

The discount campaign is valid for the telephony tariffs, including the youth tariffs. However, it does not apply to pure data tariffs and prepaid card tariffs. The promotion runs until March 10th and is only valid in Drei online shop.

Just like Magenta and A1, Drei recently increased the tariffs for existing customers. Because all 3 mobile radio operators have done this at the same time, this has a “crooked look” according to the federal competition authority. You can read more about it here.

Women's Day was the first occasion on Monday for a special session of the Austrian National Council. Even if SPÖ boss Pamela Rendi-Wagner and Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) did not disagree on the diagnosis of the particularly difficult situation of women in the pandemic, there was enough room for dissonance. The FPÖ and NEOS were also dissatisfied.

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Women's Day is not a day of parties and celebrations, but a day of struggle and protest for more justice and less inequality, stressed Rendi-Wagner. The unequal treatment of women continued in the crisis and is even worsening, emphasized the SPÖ leader. The following applies at various levels: “The most important thing is that action is taken quickly and consistently.”

The “Urgent Motion”, which is the basis of the special session, was extensively designed by the Social Democrats. Among other things, an economic stimulus package with special consideration of the concerns of female employees and a maintenance guarantee are called for. In addition, there are targeted support for women in the labor market, more money for protection against violence and childcare facilities, an emergency aid package for single parents and measures to improve the current situation of one-person companies. Rendi-Wagner described an increase in unemployment benefits as “more necessary than ever”.

In return, Kurz pointed out that the women's budget had increased by almost 50 percent. There is also a record budget from the finance minister for the labor market and re-entry. “We are the best in the world when it comes to aid, and that's a good thing,” said the Chancellor of his government. He hopes that future opening steps will bring women back into employment accordingly.

Above all, the SPÖ and FPÖ were extremely dissatisfied with Kurz's speech, also because he used the debate to condemn violence and anti-Semitism at the recent anti-corona protests in Vienna. SPÖ women's boss Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek counted only seven minutes of speeches dedicated to women by the Chancellor and accused him of disrespect. There was a lack of deeds by all members of the government, and Women's Minister Susanne Raab (ÖVP) is “a bit in a twilight sleep”.

Your FP colleague Rosa Ecker saw it similarly. Briefly “dropped the mask” and showed how little importance women actually are to him. She called for a change of direction, but also an end to the corona measures so that the women could fight family celebrations again without restrictions. Henrike Brandstötter (NEOS) criticized the fact that the desire for equality often still looks like a vision of another planet, for example when girls in the country want to participate in the voluntary fire brigade.

Here she met with the Greens' club chairwoman, Sigrid Maurer. She spoke of centuries of Sisyphean work and warned of an anti-feminist backlash in the crisis. “For us it's women's day 365 days a year,” she emphasized. She defended the Chancellor's remarks on the weekend demos. Wherever anti-Semites and neo-fascists marched, contempt for women also played a role, said Maurer.

On the part of the ÖVP, Elisabeth Pfurtscheller defended the Federal Chancellor. Department head Raab then recalled broad support measures for women and “unprecedented family benefits” in the crisis. “I want every girl in Austria to know that she can become what she wants,” she underlined, referring to a new funding initiative for scientific professions endowed with 1.3 million euros.

For women, unemployment has a more negative long-term impact on income.

The gender pay gap between women and men has narrowed in recent years. The corona pandemic and its consequences threaten the gender gap in incomes again, warns the economic research institute (Wifo). This is because declining employment and rising unemployment have a more negative long-term effect on income for women than for men, starting from a lower level.

According to a research paper written by university professor Christine Zulehner and Wifo economists René Böheim and Marian Fink, every missing year of work reduces the life income of women due to the lower average number of years of work than men has been.

Women are affected differently by the crisis than men, and the differences could contribute to the wage gap increasing rather than decreasing in the coming years. Women initially lost their jobs less often than men, but the losses were concentrated in a few economic sectors that are important for women's employment.

At the turn of the year 2020/2021, on the other hand, women were significantly more affected by unemployment than men compared to the previous year due to the ban on providing body-friendly services and the failure of winter tourism. If these sectors of the economy create fewer jobs after the crisis, then relatively more women than men will change sectors, which is associated with a loss of know-how and can lead to lower wages.

The double burden of work and care duties, especially in the “home office”, also affects women more than men. According to their own statements, during the Corona crisis, women increased their time for housework and, in particular, for childcare more than men. If women are therefore less able to take part in further education or training courses, are less able to maintain professional networks, etc., then a relative loss of wages is to be feared for this reason as well. The very concrete effects on the gender-specific wage gap cannot yet be estimated, as Austria is still in the middle of the crisis caused by Covid-19.

According to an analysis by the social-liberal Momentum Institute, the billions in government aid to combat the corona crisis favor men more than women. Of the analyzed corona aid, endowed with a total of 58.03 billion euros by 2024, only 42 percent would benefit women. Of the decision-makers about the funds, only 40 percent are female. In absolute terms, this means that men will make over 11 billion euros more than women by 2024. In order to counteract this, the economists Anna Hehenberger and Anna Pixer call for greater consideration of the areas dominated by women within the framework of existing funding instruments as well as an increase in wages in the state's sphere of influence in systemically relevant professions or in professions with a high proportion of women.

Wifo also analyzed the development of the wage gap between men and women: The wage gap has narrowed somewhat. In 2005 women earned an average of 20.5 percent (in the private sector 24.1 percent) less per hour worked than men, if differences are not taken into account (“unadjusted wage gap”). In 2019, women earned an average of 15.3 percent (in the private sector 17.1 percent) less than men.

If differences are taken into account in characteristics that could be important for wage formation, i.e. school education, work experience, occupations, etc., the result is the “adjusted” wage difference. According to Wifo, this was between 6 and 11 percent in 2019, depending on the statistical method used.

The economically liberal Agenda Austria has also examined this: Economist Heike Lehner comes to a wage gap of 36.4 percent, if you compare the earnings of all employees with that of all employees. For full-time employees all year round, the gender pay gap drops to 14.3 percent; if industries, company size, training level, knowledge, position and professional experience are taken into account, the result is 3.5 to eleven percent. More childcare places are required, especially in rural areas.

In the Wifo paper there are also suggestions as to how the wage gap could be reduced: Measures that facilitate the participation of women in the labor market, such as the expansion of childcare facilities, can increase professional experience and thus reduce the gender-specific wage gap. Regulations that stipulate that the parental leave must be divided equally between the two parents could lead to lower wage differences.

Measures that lead to more wage transparency, such as the indication of collective bargaining minimum wages in job advertisements or income reports, can also improve women's chances in the labor market, as they strengthen their negotiating position. According to Wifo, companies can only afford unfair wage discrimination if there is little competition. For equality between women and men, more competition between companies is needed, as companies then have to pay more attention to the productivity of their employees and less to their gender.

Most of the documents required to clear up the scandal are located in the Palmers premises, to which Lenzing has neither been given nor had access.

An FFP2 mask from Hygiene Austria.

In the affair of the mask manufacturer Hygiene Austria, there is now a bang from the co-owner Lenzing AG . “Last week, Lenzing tried to take over operational control of Hygiene Austria on the basis of the contractual agreement with Palmers. Since we did not have full access to important documents or reliable documentation, Lenzing feels that the operational management is in the interests of the customers of the Hygiene Austria to exercise and to implement the intended forensic work to process the processes comprehensively and in the required quality “, it says in an ad hoc announcement from Lenzig AG. “Most of the documents required for this are located in the Palmers premises, to which Lenzing has neither access nor access. Despite the most intensive use of resources by Lenzing, the urgently required rapid clarification with reliable results was just as impossible as the actual exercise of the Management. Lenzing therefore sees the current allegations being dealt with by the responsible authorities. Lenzing will support this to the best of its ability. “

Clarification required

And it goes on to say: ” With immediate effect, the nomination of DI Stephan Sielaff as managing director of Hygiene Austria will be withdrawn and Stephan Trubrich will be dismissed as managing director In the future, the management board of Lenzing AG will be exclusively responsible for Stephan Sielaff for all agendas concerning the participation in Hygiene Austria. Sielaff will coordinate all decisions with the supervisory board. “

According to Lenzing, the “Hygiene Austria” project was co-founded with the deep conviction that Austrian quality could make an important contribution to protecting the population in the largest pandemic of the last hundred years. The promise “Made in Austria” became evident not guaranteed throughout. A comprehensive and ruthless clarification is therefore essential. “

Lenzing AG holds 50.1 percent and Palmers Textil AG 49.9 percent of Hygiene Austria, which was founded in spring 2020 for mask production. The company based in Wiener Neudorf (Mödling district) had admitted that some of the masks marketed as “Made in Austria” were bought in China.

The French billionaire and politician Olivier Dassault was killed in a helicopter crash. The helicopter with the 69-year-old on board crashed on Sunday near Deauville in northern France. The pilot was also killed. Olivier Dassault was the son of Serge Dassault, who headed the arms company of the same name. His family is one of the richest in France and in the world.

According to the air traffic control authority, the Aerospatiale AS350 Ecureuil (squirrel) machine crashed in sunny weather and weak winds shortly after take-off from private property. Investigations have been launched.

Olivier Dassault belonged to the Republican Party (LR) and sat for them in the National Assembly. French President Emmanuel Macron praised him in the short message service Twitter as a man of many talents and declared: “His brutal death is an enormous loss.”

Prime Minister Jean Castex praised Dassault as a “humanist MP” and a “visionary entrepreneur”. The 69-year-old leaves a family with three children. He was a passionate photographer, pilot and composer.

The Dassaults are among the most influential families in France. The group includes industries such as aerospace, defense, auction, wine and media. The Dassault Aviation Group has been a leading French aircraft manufacturer for 70 years and is behind the Falcon private jet, the Mirage fighter jet and, most recently, the ultra-modern Rafale fighter jet.

Dassault was the grandson of Manuel Bloch, an aviation visionary who was interned in a concentration camp during the Nazi era for his refusal to cooperate with the German aviation industry. Bloch later renamed himself Dassault and founded the Dassault Group.

After the death of his father, Serge Dassault took over the company. When he died of heart failure in his Paris office in 2018, he had not named a successor. Then there were arguments between Olivier and his three siblings. A statement by Olivier that he would be the best candidate for the successor was rejected by his father while he was still alive. Most recently he sat on the supervisory board.

According to an estimate by the US business magazine Forbes, all siblings each have assets of around five billion euros. Olivier Dassault was considered the 361st richest man in the world, along with his two brothers and sisters, according to Forbes' 2020 list.