Finance

Revenues fell 3.9 percent in January compared to December

The coronavirus lockdown has thoroughly spoiled the start of 2021 for retailers. Their income in January was 3.9 percent lower than in the previous month, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on Tuesday. Adjusted for prices (real), there was even a drop of 4.5 percent, which follows a record drop of 9.1 percent in December. Economists polled by Reuters had only expected minus 0.3 percent.

“This decline can be explained with the ongoing corona lockdown, which meant the closure of many retail stores since December 16, 2020,” it said. The end of the temporary VAT cut may also have contributed to this, as many consumers made major purchases in the old year to save money.

“After the crashing slump in December, retail sales have now plummeted even further,” said the chief economist of the KfW development bank, Fritzi Köhler-Geib. “When shops are closed, nothing can be sold,” said the chief economist of the Lampe Bank, Alexander Krüger. Online trading is strong, but it cannot make up for it.

The weak development indicates that the German economy as a whole is likely to shrink noticeably in the first quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2020, growth of 0.3 percent was still enough, as exports and the construction boom more than made up for the decline in private consumption.

According to Bank Austria, there was a 16.1% drop in production in the 2020 corona year

The Austrian automotive supplier industry survived the crisis year 2020 better than most of the major European car manufacturer countries. According to an industry report published by Bank Austria on Tuesday, the production decline in this country was 16.1 percent, the EU average was 22 percent. Stronger growth is expected for this year, but the domestic industry will not reach the pre-crisis level until 2022.

Bank Austria economist Günter Wolf sees the Austrian motor vehicle industry as well equipped in view of the structural change in the industry – keyword: mandatory CO2 reduction. “Austria's automotive supplier industry should also benefit in the long term from the close relationship, especially with the German premium manufacturers, and protect its very good international competitive position. However, the sector's scope for expansion is narrowing.”

So far, the car manufacturers and suppliers in Austria and Germany have been able to compensate for the very high personnel costs compared to Eastern Europe with strong productivity gains. According to Bank Austria, the Austrian automotive parts manufacturers were even more active. In Germany, value added per employee has increased by 50 percent since 2008, and in Germany by 31 percent. That should be thanks to the high innovation expenditure, so the UniCredit subsidiary bank. The Austrians invested 4.2 percent of the industry's turnover in research and development (R&D), the Germans more than five percent – both significantly more than any other larger manufacturer in Europe.

Current economic output eight percent below the previous year's level

For the first time since Christmas 2020, the number of people in Austria without work has fallen below the 500,000 mark. The ÖVP ministers Martin Kocher, Gernot Blümel and Margarete Schramböck announced this on Tuesday in a press conference at the Federal Chancellery. Currently around 490,000 people are registered as unemployed or in AMS training. The Public Employment Service itself reported 509,000 unemployed as of February 28th.

According to the government, the number of short-time workers has also decreased. Around 478,000 people are currently registered for short-time work, 7,000 fewer than in the previous week. The ministers spoke of a positive trend. The economic output estimated by Wifo is currently only 8 percent below the previous year's value, and no longer at a minus of 13 percent, as at the end of the hard lockdown. However, the recovery will be weaker than after the first lockdown in spring 2020.

According to Finance Minister Blümel, 84 million euros of the 204 million euros applied for so far were paid out for the default bonus. To date there have been a total of 29,299 applications. Accordingly, the average sum per application is just under 7,000 euros.

Empty disco

The local night gastronomy has been closed for almost a year. After the lockdown summit, the opening has moved into an almost unreachable distance.

On Monday, the Austrian Federal Government's gastro summit took place, which made the decision to open the pub gardens at the end of March. Not a single word was said about night gastronomy – now the Association of Austrian Night Gastronomers (VÖNG) is raging and is calling for a round table with the federal government. Night gastronomy has been left out for months.

It now seems as if an opening in this area has moved into an unreachable distance. “Even if you have done excellent business, it is impossible to keep a business going for a year without adequate financial support from the state,” emphasizes Stefan Ratzenberger, chairman of the Association of Austrian Night Gastronomers. “But to have a perspective and the hope of surviving economically and not being 'faded out' in all decision-making processes,” said Ratzenberger.

Criticism is particularly voiced because all financial support and all easing steps in the tourism industry are aimed purely at the hotel and day catering business.

Last year, the federal government did not address the requirements and the special features of night-time gastronomy in any way, nor did it during the gastro summit.

Financial support from the state cannot ensure the survival of this industry either. The fixed cost subsidy with a cap of 90% inevitably leads to (delayed) bankruptcy, because 100 percent of the fixed costs have been paid for a year – 10 percent by the night restaurateurs themselves, who have had no income for 12 months. Not to forget the preservation of the personal standard of living. Here, too, countless “personal bankruptcies” are to be expected, the association notes.

For this reason, it is called for “finally to create a separate and legally binding definition for night-time gastronomy. This is the only way tailor-made help can be specified and help where it is urgently needed.” A round table with the federal government is therefore “urgently needed”.

The association is also disappointed that “countless concepts have been presented in the past few months”, but “not one has been pursued”.

“It almost seems as if they wanted to keep us pondered and busy with hope,” said Ratzenberger.

Now the “flexibility and willingness to develop concepts and preparatory work”, which is constantly required by night-time gastronomy, is required by the Austrian federal government, according to the association. “There are ways to save night gastronomy. But you have to act and help quickly and efficiently!”

In addition, the Association of Austrian Night Gastronomers expects a move away from the “constant announcement policy towards realpolitik and thus towards perspective and planning.” , but appropriate support must be guaranteed. There is currently nothing. Not even light at one end of the tunnel, because even this is missing, “says Ratzenberger.

The main demand: the round table with Tourism Minister Köstinger, Finance Minister Blümel and Health Minister Anschober.

“We have to present our precarious situation to the political leaders and decision-makers in order to work together on a quick and efficient solution. Otherwise we will see the end of domestic night-time gastronomy heralded and inevitable!” Explains Ratzenberger.

Finally, Ratzenberger reminds us that the value chain of Austrian night gastronomy goes far beyond bars, clubs, discos, etc. DJs, light and sound technicians, security and cleaning companies, taxi companies and, for example, sausage stand operators, as well as suppliers and producers, all posted heavy losses. Numerous jobs shake everywhere.

Plants in Göttingen and Osterode will be merged, and almost 270 employees will be laid off as a result of the move.

The Upper Austrian technology group Miba will close its plain bearing plant in Braunschweig, Germany, next year. 270 jobs will be lost. In addition, the plants in Göttingen and Osterode will be merged. The company confirmed a corresponding report in the “Oberösterreichische Nachrichten” (OÖN, Tuesday). The restructuring was justified to establish an innovation center for renewable energies in Osterode.

The previous production in Braunschweig is to be gradually shut down from summer 2021 and continued at other locations. For works council Martin Grun, however, the plant closure came as a complete surprise. From his point of view, the order situation was “almost” at normal level, he told the OÖN.

According to Miba, however, the plant has been suffering for years from the global decline in demand for the plain bearings produced there for 2-stroke and 4-stroke engines. The pandemic has exacerbated the situation. The plant could therefore “not be operated sustainably economically”. At Miba, it was emphasized that the company wanted fair and socially responsible dealings with its employees.

The approximately 100 employees at the Göttingen plant, which will be merged with the one in Osterode (around 150 employees), are to be offered the opportunity to move to the Osterode plant 35 kilometers away, where industrial plain bearings for large compressors, turbines and gearboxes are currently being manufactured become.

In future, however, the know-how for the more efficient use of sustainable energy sources is to be bundled in Osterode. At Miba, it is expected that not only will the demand for renewable energies increase, but that this process will also be fueled by the rescue programs in the wake of the pandemic.

In 2019, the Upper Austrian Miba and the German Zollern Group received ministerial approval for their planned joint venture in the field of plain bearings, which had previously been rejected by the Federal Cartel Office. Economics minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) issued the condition that 50 million euros must be invested.

Miba brought its five production sites for engine plain bearings into the joint venture and now holds 74.9 percent. The German Zollern contributed one engine sliding bearing and two industrial sliding bearing plants, including the plants in Braunschweig and Osterode. The required investment will take place, according to Miba, so that one is “in plan”, but a location guarantee was not part of the ministerial approval.

A Miami art collector made a fortune selling a ten-second video clip on the Internet.

In October 2020, art collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile bought a 10-second clip depicting a work of art for $ 67,000. It shows a gigantic Donald Trump, collapsed on the ground, marked with “Loser” in a completely idyllic setting where people walk by and happy birds fly around. Rodriguez-Fraile resold the video clip last week – for $ 6.6 million, according to Reuters.

Beeple produces crypto art

The video clip is from the digital artist Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann. Although it is a digital video clip, it is nevertheless unique in its kind. It is a so-called non-fungible token (NFT). This is a cryptographic token that cannot be exchanged and is therefore unique. It cannot be replicated or destroyed and is stored on a blockchain.

Many investors and collectors jumped on this new trend in the wake of the Corona crisis and are collecting NFTs in a targeted manner, reports Reuters. You can imagine it with the NTFs like this: “You go to the Louvre in Paris and take a picture of the Mona Lisa. But that has no value because it does not take into account the origin of the work ”, as the art collector Rodgriguez-Fraile puts it. The work is so valuable because Beeple is behind it, according to the art collector.

Strong demand

NFTs are ideal for digital assets, of which there are only one or a few. In addition to crypto art, this can also be trading cards, game characters or virtual stretches of land in virtual worlds.

The work was sold on the OpenSea marketplace. This was able to turn over $ 86.3 million in February. In the same period last year, monthly sales were around $ 1.5 million. However, it is said that there could also be a price bubble behind these current mega-sales. Investors who specifically rely on NFTs should therefore be careful.

But Christie's is now jumping on the bandwagon and is currently selling its first digital crypto art, also by Beeple. It shows a collage of 5,000 photos and is again an NFT. Bids are currently around $ 3 million and the auction will run until March 11, 2021.

According to the “Ö1-Journal”, 100 employees are registered with the AMS for termination. Ruefa recorded a 70 percent drop in sales due to the corona crisis.

The corona crisis is taking its toll on another company in the tourism industry. Austria's largest tourism group Verkehrsbüro with its more than 100 Ruefa travel agencies is planning a major downsizing. According to an article in the “Ö1-Journal”, 100 out of 600 Ruefa employees were registered with the labor market service for dismissal. Spokeswoman Andrea Hansal did not confirm the number itself, but the downsizing did.

“I cannot confirm the figure itself, but we will have to take measures due to the ongoing very challenging overall situation for the travel industry and unfortunately there are also plans to cut staff,” said Hansal in the Mittagsjournal.

The reasons are “very plausible and obvious,” said Hansal. For a year now, the subject of travel has been extremely difficult or almost impossible at the moment. “That brought us a turnover loss of over 70 percent in 2020,” said the tourist office spokeswoman.

For large companies, Hansal asked for more help. Because large companies would fall over to a lot of funding due to the cap. “Special solutions are definitely needed here,” says Hansal.

“Warehouse instead of department store” is the motto in times of online trading. Away from the big shopping streets, the consequences are enormous

A fashion retailer is rented in every second retail store in the city.

Which also outlines the problem.

Since large festivals and events were canceled due to pandemics, evening gowns have been slow-moving. Textile retailers report that the number of suits sold has halved since the home office found its way into most companies. The turnover of textile dealers has slumped by an average of 25 percent, the list of insolvent fashion brands ranges from Dressmann to Pimkie to Stefanel and is getting longer and longer.

With the imbalance of the fashion industry, the erosion of the city centers continues, warns Rainer Will, managing director of the trade association. 10,000 businesses have already been lost in the past ten years, and currently another 10,000 would be threatened. Not only because of the corona, of course, also because consumer behavior is changing – keyword online shopping.

The consulting company, Standort + Markt, analyzes the development of the shopping streets every year. The current study confirms that fewer and fewer textile retailers are settling in the cities. “Only twelve percent of the new shops are fashion stores,” says Roman Schwarzenecker from S + M.

In general, retail space is on a shrinking course. Across Austria there are therefore only ten cities in which the sales areas are still being expanded.

889 empty stores

But Corona has so far left little traces. “Despite all prophecies of doom, the vacancy rate remains unchanged at 5.9 percent,” says S + M managing director Hannes Lindner. The fluctuation rate – on average, the tenants in business premises change every 7.5 years – is also unchanged. “But there are many zombie companies,” he warns of an impending bankruptcy wave. Retailers would also withdraw from city centers. “Warehouse instead of department store” is the motto, says Lindner, referring to the web trade.

From the consultant's point of view, in many cities it would be high time to consider how visitors can be attracted, even though there are fewer and fewer shops. One way could be more catering establishments. But that alone will not be enough in many places. Retail space will probably also be converted into offices or ordinations. There is room for development: S + M has calculated that 100,000 square meters of retail space are currently empty in Austria's cities. That corresponds to the size of 889 average shops.

When the President of the Secession, Herwig Kempinger, stands only a few decimeters below street level in the unadorned archive of his institution, he looks a bit like a treasure hunter before the groundbreaking ceremony. Surrounded by 123 years of analog (art) history, during his visit to the APA he speaks of an “uncovered treasure” that will be recovered in the coming years in the course of digitization and then made accessible to the public. In doing so, new techniques are used.

Image: APA

“A few years ago I thought it would be interesting if we knew for ourselves what we had in these boxes and could make it available to the public. Century “, says the artist, who has been President of the Secession since 2013. The processing and digitization project was started last summer, and the first installment by the end of the Second World War is expected to be published in around three years.

To do this, a few hundred meters away, in a work room in Lehargasse, there are two specially employed employees who, under the direction of Tina Lipsky, will digitize and catalog all documents, works of art and other found objects in the coming years. And because Kempinger envisions a comprehensive, precise search function, the company commissioned its own database that enables detailed keywording. It is now also possible to no longer rely on scans (the historical templates are often severely affected by the light intensity), but to photograph the artifacts in high resolution, which means that the spine of the book is no longer affected. The company will cost 360,000 euros, one third of which will be borne by the Secession itself, the federal government and the City of Vienna.

To give a little insight into his treasure, Kempinger opens a drawer here, opens a folder there or pulls out a hanging shelf. There is, for example, a report from the “Wiener Rundschau” on the occasion of the opening in 1898: “Blinding white, shimmering gold”, describes the new building that rises up “between masses of rubble, dirt and clay”, quoted Kempigner from the article that was repealed at that time. There was no budget for purchases, but his predecessors “collected money well”.

Among the numerous works there is one by Bruno Gironcoli, which, however, will no longer be shown in exhibitions, since the Secession has dedicated itself to the presentation of living contemporary artists. Or numerous photos from earlier days that eke out their existence in a thick folder. Among them: recordings of legendary carnival festivals that took place in the richly decorated Secession in the middle of the 20th century.

It is a stroke of luck for Kempinger that the archive, which was stored for decades in the warehouse in Lehargasse and during the Second World War (“when the Nazis turned the Secession into a tire store”) in the competitive institution Künstlerhaus, survived the two world wars. After digitization, he hopes to be able to offer a rich fund for various fields of science – from art history to history and sociology. While the database will be accessible free of charge, printable data can be downloaded for a fee.

A look at handwritten correspondence in Kurrent script, which cannot be deciphered by everyone, shows how fragmented the work of the two employees is. “Fortunately, we managed to find someone here,” says the President happily, referring to numerous autographs that have been preserved from correspondence with international greats such as Monet, Rodin and Munch. The exchange was lively “because all the artists found the Secession as a wonderful idea and location and wanted to come to Vienna”. Rodin's archive, for example, contains the insurance list for his works, which he exhibited here, and Max Kurzweil's handwritten proofs have been corrected, among other things.

The most important pieces are to be digitized in the coming months and years in order to ultimately enable comprehensive, accurate research. And then? Then it goes on: With the digitization of the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. You should then have fewer problems with deciphering and transcribing: “We also kept every email …”

The unusual heavy transport caused a sensation in southern Great Britain.

An entrepreneur in Bristol, in the south of Great Britain, wanted an eye-catching office and event location. And so he bought a disused airplane.

The entrepreneur was able to get hold of a 53-year-old, disused Boeing 727; Cost around 115,000 euros. He received the bare fuselage of the plane at a special price because he did without wings and engines.

The problem with the new office space was the transport from an airport to the company premises. The Boeing 727 had to cover the slightly more than 50 kilometers long distance from Cotswold Airport to Bristol in a truck.

Great 7hrs of compulsive Facebook viewing of @pytchuk Boeing 727 aircraft transported from Kemble to #pytchair headquarters in Brislington, #Bristol Full respect Johnny Palmer for the grt future venture. Supported grt charity @GWAAC 😎🛩🛩 @VisitBristol pic.twitter.com/s9hwdaiZ6W

– Tony Miles (@smileymileyuk) February 27, 2021

#pytch new office the fuselage of a # boeing727 moving into Brislington #pytchair pic.twitter.com/qe0pBmpdWI

– REKLAW CAPTURES (@ walkermark67) February 27, 2021

Unusual transportation

The cruising altitude of 0 meters has caused a stir in the south-west of Great Britain in the past few days. Numerous photos showing the unusual transport were shared on social networks.

With a length of a good 40 meters, a height of 4 meters and a width of 5 meters, roads and intersections had to be partially blocked for the Boeing 727. The heavy transport also occupied at least 2 lanes on the autobahn.

The moment a Boeing 727 is driven on the M5 into Bristol https://t.co/nhEBZndZvJ pic.twitter.com/vFwoA5QJnD

– Bristol Biz (@BristolBizz) February 27, 2021

Never thought I'd see a Boeing 727 drive along the ring road 🤭🤭 # boeing727 #pytch #gloucestertobristol #intelligo #bristolringroad # BS16 #amazingsight pic.twitter.com/qGlLtJllJl

– Joanne Lewis (@Jochelsealewis) February 27, 2021

Discontinued aircraft

From 1968 to 1970 the Boeing 727 was in service with Japan Airlines. But only for 2 years. In 1970 it was converted into a private VIP plane.

There are numerous unusual uses for discarded aircraft. In Nanjing, China, for example, there is a restaurant in an Airbus A320 and in Costa Rica a Boeing 727 has been converted into a hotel.

In Bahrain, the Boeing 747 was sunk in the sea and has served as an artificial reef for divers ever since, and a hobbyist has even turned an old aircraft turbine into a camper van.