Finance

The Dutch bank will withdraw from the Czech Republic and Austria by the end of the year.

The Dutch bank ING wants to sell its private customers in Austria and the Czech Republic by the end of the year, as it announced at the beginning of the week. In the Czech Republic, according to a report in the “Presse”, the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) agreed in advance with ING to take over its Czech retail customers.

In March, the 375,000 ING customers received an offer from the Czech RBI subsidiary Raiffeisenbank to switch to them. Regarding the purchase price modalities, the newspaper only wrote on Thursday that the agreement was based on a commission principle, according to which Raiffeisen pays a predetermined amount for each ING customer won.

Before the deal, which is still to be approved by the antitrust authorities, the RBI subsidiary has served 1.2 million customers in the Czech Republic. This is already the largest foreign market for RBI, the local balance sheet total has so far been 18 billion euros.

For RBI, the move in the Czech Republic is the third within a few weeks. At the beginning of February, the purchase of Equa-Bank was announced by private equity investor AnaCap Financial Partners, a company specializing in consumer credit (480,000 customers).

The third deal was the purchase of Akcenta, a payment transaction provider with 43,000 customers in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Germany.

An app and a credit card, that's all you need to go shopping on Amazon Go. A supermarket that does without cashiers and queues. Amazon is bringing its till-free supermarkets to Europe with an initial store in London. The shop under the brand name Amazon Fresh opens on Thursday, as the agency PA announced, citing the company. Further shops are being planned in the British capital. The concept is similar to the Amazon Go stores in the USA. Customers simply take items off the shelf and leave the store.

Cameras and other sensors such as scales in the shelves register who has taken which goods. The price is debited via the app after leaving the shop. “We know that customers in the UK want convenience to shop and we believe they will appreciate being able to easily walk in and out of the purchases they need,” said Amazon Fresh UK chief Matt Birch to PA.

Rumors of entry into UK grocery market

In the US, the online retail giant now has 28 Go stores in Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and New York. Amazon has also been offering the technology to other retailers since last year.

There have been rumors for a long time about a broad entry of Amazon into the competitive British food market, while the organic chain Whole Foods, which was taken over by the online retailer, has several branches in London. It is expected that one of the larger chains will work with the group. Amazon Fresh has been delivering food ordered online in the UK since 2016. So far, however, the company has not really gained a foothold. According to estimates, the market share is currently three percent.

The number of passengers is currently below 10 percent of the pre-crisis level. The hope lies in the second half of the year.

Tower at Vienna International Airport.

As expected, Vienna Airport suffered massively in 2020 due to the corona pandemic and the slump in international travel.

Sales fell by 61.1 percent to EUR 333.7 million, there was a loss of EUR 75.7 million. This year the airport is hoping for an upswing in the second half of the year and, in total, for a “black zero” with a profit of 4 million euros. Nevertheless, the number of passengers is likely to decrease by 60 percent to only 12.5 million compared to pre-Corona times.

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The airport needs short-time work until the end of 2022, otherwise there is a risk of job cuts, according to the broadcast from Vienna Airport on Thursday morning. “Anyone who is vaccinated, immune or tested negative must be allowed to travel, ongoing restrictions for vaccinated people are not justified,” said the airport's position.

For this, uniform minimum standards for vaccination and test certificates are needed across Europe. In 2020 there were only 7.8 million travelers, as few as last in 1994. The daily passenger volume is still below 10 percent of the pre-crisis level.

On Thursday, the Ibiza parliamentary committee of inquiry once again devoted itself to the “Ballhausplatz project”, the unofficial election campaign strategy of the ÖVP in 2017. The first questioned was the entrepreneur Gabriela Spiegelfeld, who had organized events with potential supporters of the now Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz during the 2017 election campaign. She resisted being called a fundraiser.

Image: APA

“It was and is always a pleasure for me to bring people from the most diverse areas together”, Spiegelfeld presented in her opening statement as a non-partisan networker who is concerned with “good policy for Austria as a business location”. Since 2016 she has been organizing roundtables on various topics, including for the former Hofburg candidate lrmgard Griss.

Kurz also approached her to continue these “discussion rounds” and to support him – which Spiegelfeld said he did. “The donation was completely irrelevant,” she said, and: “If someone asked me whether they could donate, I referred them to the homepage or the department responsible for donations.” In the election year 2017, the ÖVP received EUR 4.4 million in donations (almost EUR 3 million of which went to the federal party), plus EUR 424,000 through sponsorship.

Spiegelfeld, who runs a PR agency, emphasized her purely private support for Kurz. She denied that she had invited to meetings on a smaller scale with Novomatic boss Harald Neumann. Admittedly she “noticed Neumann again and again”, but “I don't even know whether at an event I organized”. She was not aware of a “Ballhausplatz project” at the time. Spiegelfeld has also suggested people, for example from her women's network, for posts, as she said. “Some have become, some have not.”

SPÖ parliamentary group leader Jan Krainer wanted to know whether she met Kurz on Mallorca. “No, of course not – an unbelievable insinuation. He wasn't with me, neither did he stay with me, nor was he with me over coffee.” In private she had met him again and again, for example she had repeatedly organized larger dinners, but in this context no presents had ever been offered.

Following Spiegelfeld's questioning, Daniel Varro, a cabinet employee of Finance Minister Gernot Blümel (ÖVP), will answer questions from MPs. The mandataries expect information about alleged agreements with possible donors in this area from the expert in foundation law. Lisa Wieser, a close colleague of Chancellor Kurz, has been invited as the last person to provide information.

Vienna. The current occupancy rate at Vienna Airport is around ten percent of the pre-crisis level, said airport board member Julian Jäger on Thursday at the presentation of the balance sheet for 2020. And, as expected, it turned out to be deep red. The number of passengers fell by 75 percent in the first year of the corona pandemic – to 7.8 million passengers. Around the same level that Vienna Airport had in 1994.

This was also noticeable in the balance sheet. Sales fell by 61 percent to 333.7 million. And despite a savings package of 200 million euros, instead of a profit of over 180 million euros, as originally expected, there was a loss of 75.7 million euros.

Only slow recovery expected

For this year, the airport is hoping for an increase in travel to a total of around 40 percent of the volume of 2019. And the recovery is also expected to be slow in the coming years. In 2022 it is hoped that it will be around 70 percent of the pre-crisis level, and around 80 percent in 2023. “The instrument of short-time work must therefore continue to be available,” demands Günther Ofner, board member of the airport. “At least until the end of 2022.” According to the current regulation, short-time work should expire this June. It is currently not foreseeable whether it will be extended again. However, when he took office in January, Labor Minister Martin Kocher said that short-time work was “not a permanent instrument”.

Without short-time work, there will be a wave of layoffs

If there was no extension, there would probably be terminations. Not only at the airport, but also in the entire tourism industry, which is about “tens of thousands of jobs”, says Ofner. With short-time working, he hopes that the airport will be able to reduce its current workforce from around 5200 to the target level for 2023 of around 4700 to 4800 employees through natural fluctuation.

However, a prerequisite for the recovery of business is also the early freedom to travel for people who have been vaccinated, are immune due to a recent illness or have recently been tested. “Permanent restrictions for generally healthy people cannot be justified legally, politically or ethically and morally,” says Ofner. He appeals to politicians to find a solution for a digital vaccination certificate as soon as possible – if possible, a uniform EU solution. Austria should form a “coalition of the willing” with other tourism countries in order to convince reluctant countries such as Germany.

Vaccination for airport employees planned for April

At the airport itself, it is expected that employees will receive the vaccination in April. Since politicians no longer want to give priority to critical infrastructure, they are now only in phase 3. Ofner, however, hopes that the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson will accelerate the number of vaccinations. So far, the airport has carried out around 200,000 PCR tests for its employees.

Recent surveys have shown that people want to go back to the ice. More than 200,000 PCR tests carried out since May of the previous year. “The travel needs of Austrians are very high. A third want to fly abroad by plane in the summer or autumn, ”says Ofner. And here you can easily check at check-in whether someone is immune or at least not infected, adds Jäger. “After the attacks of September 11, 2001, we got used to the fact that it goes without saying that you should be examined for weapons at the airport. In future it will be a matter of course that the health status will also be checked. “

This year Vienna Airport wants to create “a black zero” again. The southern extension and the third runway were pushed back indefinitely.

“Honesty is an expensive gift,” the most famous investor Warren Buffett once said. The start-up Twinner, which makes 360-degree scans of used vehicles, has now tried to measure this honesty in numbers. An optimistic plan. How is that supposed to work?

In this case, the focus was on a professional group that probably also enjoys an expandable reputation internationally: car dealers. To pinpoint the honesty of a city based on its car dealerships sounds amusing, but with the best will in the world, it isn't meaningful enough to support a study. That is why there has been a search for other ways of examining honesty in different areas of a society. And they found what they were looking for.

Trust “from top to bottom”

In the context of the study it was assumed that honesty “is often exemplified from top to bottom” and that the administration of a city acts as a “role model” for the people who live there. The aspect was divided into three sub-areas: administration, economy and society. Administrative transparency was measured using data on corruption, budget transparency and the integrity of the elections. In contrast, the economic transparency was based on the percentage of the existing shadow economy in one place, i.e. the economic activities that are hidden from the official authorities. Social transparency was measured by the extent to which the rule of law, the right to have a say, accountability and freedom of the press exist in a city. It also analyzed how strongly residents perceive theft, which also contributes to the overall picture of how people rate the honesty of their fellow citizens.

The wallet experiment

In order to measure individual honesty in a city, existing data was used: In the so-called “wallet experiment”, 17,000 wallets were laid out in cities around the world to see how many of them would be returned.

All these parameters were compared in 350 metropolises in which the study creators had access to comparable data. Cities in India and China, for example, are not part of the study due to a lack of data. Then the selection was limited to the 75 most honest cities. Study author Twinner emphasizes, however, that this index should not serve to denounce the most dishonest cities and places. Rather, one would like to highlight the cities that did well. That would be:

Zurich therefore ranks first in the city honesty index. And suddenly Warren Buffett's statement makes more sense than ever: “Honesty is an expensive gift.”

The exact results of the city honesty index can be found here.

The company has its own delivery system with electric bicycles. Sushi will start next week.

Sushi icon image.

The catering company Do & Co wants to deliver food in the future. “We want to do more business with end customers,” said Do & Co boss Attila Dogudan in the “Presse” (Thursday edition). Delivery services like Mjam or Lieferando are too expensive for him. Fees of 30 percent, that's not possible. “That's why we're working on our own delivery system, which we plan to start next week. First of all with sushi,” announced Dogudan.

In the future, there will be small shops in every district of Vienna where you can order and pick up something, as Dogudan described. According to his plans, there should also be Do & Co deliverers on bicycles. “We are currently working with manufacturers who will supply us with improved electric bicycles – with an attached refrigerator.”

If the attempt in Vienna is successful, Dogudan thinks of expansion. “Then we can use it to go to London and New York. We already have kitchens there that are paid for. Any additional sales come on top of it here. And that would probably add more than is lost through the break-in with the flying business “, said the company boss in an interview.

Do & Co's core business with airlines and major events has come under great pressure in the corona pandemic. Sales collapsed by three quarters.

Thanks to great growth in streaming, the German music industry has put up with the consequences of the corona pandemic in terms of sales in 2020. “The income from sales of sound carriers and revenues from the streaming business amounted to 1.79 billion euros, an increase of nine percent compared to 2019,” announced the Federal Association of the Music Industry (BVMI) on Thursday in Berlin. The market in Austria also grew in 2020 thanks to streaming.

Image: APA (dpa)

71.5 percent, or almost three quarters of sales, resulted from online music usage in Germany. After an already high level in 2019, the share of audio streaming with 55.5 percent market share at the 2020 annual financial statements was even 63.4 percent. At the beginning of January, the BVMI announced that, according to a special evaluation by the market research institute GfK Entertainment, more than 139 billion music streams had been recorded in the previous year – almost a third more than 2019 (107 billion) and three quarters more than 2018 (79.5 billion). .

According to the industry figures, the temporary closure of stores was clearly noticeable in CD sales: The share of total sales fell again by 18 percent, but at 21.6 percent the silver disc is still the second-strongest format on the German music market. The vinyl record (5.5 percent of the total market share) follows at a clear distance – for the first time in a long time in third place – ahead of the increasingly insignificant downloads (4.2 percent). According to its own information, the Federal Association of the Music Industry represents the interests of around 200 record producers and companies that represent more than 80 percent of the German music market.

There was also an increase in Austria, where sales in the previous year grew by 3.4 percent to EUR 171.6 million. The streaming segment contributed more than half to this result; 91.6 million euros were earned here, which corresponds to an increase of around a third. For the CD, there was a full minus of 22 percent to 30.5 million euros, as the domestic industry association IFPI announced in mid-February.

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FFP2 masks

After the scandal surrounding the mask manufacturer Hygiene Austria, the first supermarket is reacting and withdrawing all FFP2 masks.

In the Corona crisis, many smell the fast business. So does the manufacturer Hygiene Austria, which also has an extremely good network. Numerous authorities and supermarkets stocked up on him with FFP2 masks. Because the manufacturer promised tested quality, “Made in Austria”.

Now the house was searched and the suspicion was that defective masks were imported from China and relabeled. When they were then assessed as “not positive” in a preliminary test by the authorities, the coveted CE certificate was simply picked up from a Hungarian company. The ORF journalist Martin Thür researched.

It is still unclear which masks, which batches, are exactly affected. It may therefore be that those FFP2 masks do not offer the protection they promise. These allegations have now apparently been confirmed.

The supermarket chain Spar also stocked up on Hygiene Austria. If you first tried to clarify the situation in a conversation and with an expert opinion, Spar now pulls the rip cord. A traceability of the masks can no longer be guaranteed 100 percent.

That is why “we will now take all masks out of our range as a precaution,” said Spar Austria on Twitter.

By the way: This is how you recognize the “cheat masks” >>

The opposition disapproves of the Ministry of Health's new legislative plans to combat the corona crisis. “The compulsory test is coming”, annoyed FPÖ boss Norbert Hofer, the government had always said that the tests were voluntary, so “lied” to the population. He is alluding to the fact that the FFP2 mask will no longer be an alternative to the test for professional groups such as teachers. SP chairwoman Pamela Rendi-Wagner wants a social partner agreement here.

Image: APA

In itself, Rendi-Wagner sees the occupational group tests as an important component in fighting the pandemic. But you assume that the government will find an understanding with employee and employer representatives before such a change, said the SPÖ boss at a press conference on Thursday morning.

Anchober's amendment also provides for more severe penalties in certain areas: Anyone who organizes commercial events and disregards a prohibition under the Epidemic Act will in future be punished with a fine of up to 30,000 euros or six weeks in prison according to the bill. Participants in prohibited events have to deliver up to 1,450 euros. This is to prevent people on the streets from demanding the resignation of the Chancellor, Hofer was indignant. When asked, Hofer expressly welcomed the fact that his club boss Herbert Kickl wants to speak at the upcoming Corona demos at the weekend.

In any case, Hofer also rejects the planned new regulation with regard to the options for intervention at meetings. So far, this regulation in the Epidemic Act with the passage “confluence of large crowds” was formulated somewhat vaguely; the amendment stipulates that in future there will be at least four people who are considered to be an event. Even for NEOS health spokesman Gerald Loacker this is “not acceptable” because it would mean that the health minister “wants to control all small family gatherings”.

Above all, Loacker was “shocked” that with the amendment, night exit restrictions could be imposed even if contact tracking no longer works. “Health Minister Anschober has apparently learned nothing from twelve months of the pandemic. His only answer to the pandemic is apparently lockdown,” said Loacker in a written statement to the APA.

Rendi-Wagner sees it similarly. It would be the government's job to fight the pandemic. Instead, they relax despite the increasing numbers of intensive care patients and, on the other hand, make legal regulations for easier movement restrictions. This shows the coalition's lack of plan. This is just loosening up into a “third wave”. It would even have to be tightened if the numbers go up further.

FPÖ boss Hofer, who was plagued by pain after a herniated disc at his press conference – “a present for his 50th birthday” – also called for extensive help, especially for families. He proposed a 13th family allowance, a retroactive special grant of 100 euros per month for each child in home schooling and additional financial support for single parents. Air cleaning devices should also be purchased for the classrooms; the total cost of 150 million is not an issue for Hofer in view of other expenses in the crisis. In addition, Hofer insisted on an increase in the care allowance and a “Corona Thousand” in the form of vouchers for the “heroes” of the crisis.