Finance

The Swedish fintech is now worth more to its investors than Deutsche Bank, which has a market value of 25 billion dollars.

The payment service provider Klarna has raised 1 billion dollars (825 million euros) in capital from investors. Klarna announced on Monday that the financing round with old and new donors was four times oversubscribed. This tripled Klarna's valuation within six months to $ 31 billion. The Swedish fintech is now worth more to its investors than Deutsche Bank, which has a market value of 25 billion dollars.

Klarna is currently growing massively and is benefiting from the trend towards shopping on the Internet and the increased number of payments at checkouts with cards or smartphones. Klarna last raised $ 650 million in fresh capital from investors in September, the valuation at that time was $ 11 billion.

Founded in 2005, the company has 87 million customers worldwide and achieved a transaction volume of $ 56 billion in 2020. Sales broke the $ 1 billion mark for the first time. Klarna competes with the US payment service PayPal and the Dutch provider Adyen. Deutsche Bank is also trying to gain a foothold in the business.

Currently only the branches in Austria and Luxembourg are open.

According to the company, numerous investors are interested in the German Adler fashion stores. There are about ten interested parties, said a spokesman on Monday. The German “Main-Echo” had previously reported on it. The company from Haibach near Aschaffenburg has been in the process of insolvency under self-administration since January. The bankruptcy plan should be in place by June.

Currently only the company's 24 branches in Austria and three branches in Luxembourg are open. The 142 branches in Germany, however, are closed. According to the spokesman, they should all be reopened after the current restrictions have ended.

Two out of three say restrictions do more harm than viruses.

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Austrians are increasingly concerned about the economic consequences of the corona policy. According to a Gallup online survey of 1,000 people, almost two thirds now believe that the measures taken to cope with the pandemic are causing great economic damage. A year ago, only 41 percent agreed to the statement that the economic consequences of the corona measures would destroy the lives of people in Austria more than Covid / Corona itself.

The domestic corona policy is also rated significantly worse. In February 2021, only 28 percent of those surveyed said that Austria had more success than other EU countries in overcoming the corona crisis. In November 2020, 42 percent were of this opinion.

The fact that Austria has suffered greater economic damage than other countries in the EU is primarily due to the fact that Austria is so heavily dependent on tourism and that a lot of money has flowed abroad through online shopping.

46 percent said only those companies that have a future should be saved; at the same time, innovation and new business models should be encouraged. 27 percent were in favor of the watering can principle, i.e. saving existing companies without restrictions through state aid. FPÖ-affine survey participants preferred the latter approach much more often, as the Gallup Institute announced on Monday. 11 percent said you don't have to do anything because the economy takes care of itself.

When asked when the climate protection measures should be promoted again, 43 percent said: “Immediately, climate protection cannot wait.” 32 percent were of the opinion that one could wait until after the crisis, because there are currently more pressing problems. 13 percent saw no need for action, because nature would recover by itself. For 6 percent of those surveyed, however, it was already too late to stop climate change during the survey period (February 18-22).

National deficit is 9.5 percent

The Italian economy collapsed massively in 2020. The GDP fell by 8.9 percent and thus slightly more than initially assumed, said the national statistical office Istat. The national deficit is 9.5 percent. The government had expected a budget gap of 10.8 percent here.

The relative mountain of debt – debt in relation to economic power – rises to 155.6 (2019: 134.6) percent. This is the highest value in the euro zone after Greece.

Without income there is no rent, without rent there is no fixed cost subsidy.

The opposition parties SPÖ and NEOS are jointly demanding clarification from the government as to whether or not companies closed in the corona lockdown will have to pay rent. Without such a clarification, the aid measures would develop into an “economic stimulus package for lawyers” in the face of the expected flood of lawsuits, says SPÖ economics spokesman Christoph Matznetter. It is unreasonable that a tenant does not know whether he has to pay the rent, says NEOS economics spokesman Sepp Schellhorn.

Matznetter points out that, according to the ABGB, tenants do not have to pay rent in the event of an epidemic-related closure, but the landlords also do not provide a replacement property. Since the government has not made it clear how to deal with the renting or leasing of closed companies, often only legal recourse remains.

Matznetter referred to two first instance judgments according to which tenants do not have to pay, but there is still no OGH judgment. Schellhorn recalled that the NEOS would have wished for loss compensation. But when it comes to government subsidies through COFAG, the government has failed to clarify how things will go on with renting or leasing closed businesses.

At the joint press conference, the Viennese cafetier Berndt Querfeld pointed out a dilemma in which he finds himself as an entrepreneur. Although he had received “sufficient funding to survive” by the end of 2020, the costs for the employees can be represented, especially thanks to short-time work, “with a few hops” such as the holiday compensation.

However, dealing with rent payments is much more difficult. On the one hand, he interprets the legal situation in such a way that he does not have to pay rent for the period with no turnover due to the official closure. But the government's funding policy, specifically the funding organization COFAG, is unclear and complicates the situation. Because COFAG demands from entrepreneurs that they reduce their rent as much as possible and only wants to support the justified portion of the rent – COFAG can even claim back what has flowed too much. According to Querfeld, there is no information about what exactly is “justified”.

Querfeld is at odds with his private landlord, but state organizations as landlords are not necessarily better either, says the entrepreneur.

Because in the end, Schönbrunn, the Burghauptmannschaft belonging to the Ministry of Economics, demanded that he submit 100 percent of the lease amounts as a fixed cost subsidy, only then would they want to negotiate reductions. However, the COFAG, which is part of the Ministry of Finance, demands the highest possible reduction in the rent before accepting an application for funding.

Strictly speaking, the Ministry of Economic Affairs tells us, “Please get 100 percent of the possible subsidies from the Ministry of Finance, give it to Schönbrunn Palace, they will consider whether they will let up,” said Querfeld. On closer inspection, this corresponds to an attempt to circumvent the legal regulations.

“Soul Kitchen” boss Farangis Firoozian criticized that she only received a fixed cost subsidy if she paid her rent – but without income she could not pay the rent. “Has anyone thought about that?” She had to liquidate everything she owned privately, while “the state leaves me hanging completely. The state has locked me up and is responsible for getting me through the crisis”. Your company was healthy before the crisis and could continue to do well after the crisis. To do this, however, she now needs support – which her many suppliers would also benefit from.

The Austrian Standards Summit Research event will take place on March 25th. Participation is free.

This year the Austrian Standards Summit Research will take place for the second time. Due to the pandemic, the event will be held virtually on March 25th. Participation is free.

The focus of the Summit Research is on the interplay between standards and patents. Due to the shorter life cycles of products and the faster development of technology, products and services are in a balancing act between dependency and competition. This balancing act can be closed by standards and patents.

Strategic tools

If these factors are considered in the research and development process, this can lead to more investments, faster results and more sophisticated technologies. At the 2nd Summit Research you will learn how standards and patents become strategic tools to achieve these goals.

Lectures and discussions will take place on March 25th from 12:30. Dietmar Trattner, Vice President Technology Group, Austrian Patent Office, will give an overview of intellectual property rights in research and development. Start-ups and students at universities with a research focus can particularly benefit from this.

Then Karl Grün, Director Standards Development, Austrian Standards, will provide an overview of open and proprietary standards.

Intellectual property and research

Elvira Welzig, Head of Department for Property Rights Management and Peter Pawlek, Property Rights Management at AWS, give a lecture on the use of intellectual property rights by SMEs.

The following program items deal with the new instruments of the European research network EUREKA and Horizon Europe, the new European research framework program.

Participation is free

The 2nd Summit Research will take place virtually on March 25, 2021, from 12:30 to 17:00. Participation is free. Registration is required on this website.

Disclaimer: futurezone is the media partner of the 2nd Austrian Standards Summit Research

The discounter Hofer is planning a shopping revolution on several levels.

At the discount store Hofer, the price tags will soon be banned from the shelves. It is not the only revolution that the branch chain is planning.

At the local discounter Hofer, no stone should be left unturned when shopping. According to “Handelsblatt”, the company is pumping 1.5 billion euros into its branches and, above all, digitization, in Germany at Aldi as well as in Austria at Hofer. Also because with the corona pandemic, online orders were increasingly an issue. Hofer in Austria will be given pilot project status, according to “Trend”.

While almost everything from ordering and delivering to work in the branches is to be converted to digitalization, the previous price tags on the shelves will soon be a thing of the past for customers. Instead of the many price tags that have to be exchanged again and again, there should be fewer, but digital displays on the shelves, according to the report. Advantage: They can be updated quickly and display several product prices at once.

The shopping experience should also be completely new when entering a Hofer branch. So far, if you step through aisles with coffee, chocolate and Co., Hofer now wants to put the fresh offer in the foreground. As soon as you enter, you should stand in front of the products such as fruit and vegetables, which are freshly sold by the discounters. This should also be a counter-accent to online trading, which especially with fruit and vegetables cannot offer this freshness, says Hofer boss Horst Leitner in the “Trend”.

What is also being planned and discussed: A widening of the checkout area with more space for the storage of shopping trolleys, a new design for the fruit, vegetable and refrigeration department and the introduction of self-scanning cash registers and payment with the mobile phone. What Leitner envisions as “music of the future”: That you no longer have to go to a specific checkout when shopping. But Leitner does not say what that looks like in practice. At Amazon's US branches, this already works via sensors in the shopping trolleys and cameras on the shelves. Another thought: cooperation with supermarket delivery services such as Alfies or gurkerl.at.

As “Cash” reports, it is not the only revolution at Hofer. According to General Director Horst Leitner, the discounters want to move away from branded products that can be bought everywhere and convince them all the more with exclusive brands and rock-bottom prices, reports “Cash”. Quality and price have to be right, according to the Hofer boss. He would like it to go away from the “actionitis”, Hofer wants to score points here with the permanently lowest price instead of promotions.

In the corona pandemic, they also used the time to “switch everything that can somehow be converted to Austrian origin”. This applies above all to beef, pork and chicken as well as the range of ham and sausages, according to Leitner. In addition to regionality, attention is also paid to an organic range. “You don't have to dance at every wedding,” says Leitner, saying that not every organic trend is being picked up, but the area should be expanded.

The wage gap between women and men is an important indicator for assessing their equality in society. Political measures aimed at promoting equality cannot avoid looking at the reasons for a wage gap and its developments.

The wage gap between women and men in Austria decreased from 2005 to 2019 (Böheim, Fink and Zulehner, 2021). In 2005 women earned an average gross hourly wage that was around 20.5% lower than that of men. In 2019, women earned an average of 15.3% less than men.

If we take into account differences between women and men in characteristics that could be important for wage levels (school education, work experience, occupation, etc.), we get what is known as the “adjusted” wage difference. We estimate this to be between 9 and 17%, depending on the statistical method used. But the adjusted wage gap has also narrowed: in 2019 it was between 6 and 11%.

Note: Statistics Austria, EU-SILC 2005-2019. Figure 2 from Böheim, Fink and Zulehner (2021, https://www.wifo.ac.at/wwa/pubid/66916). The mean wage gap is the unadjusted wage gap, ie without taking into account differences in characteristics such as education, experience or sector. The adjusted wage difference is the remainder that remains when such characteristic differences are taken into account. Public and private sector.

Reasons for the decreased wage gap

The main reason for the decline in the wage gap is that women and men have become more similar in the characteristics that are in demand in the labor market. In some cases, women have even overtaken men. In 2001/02, 50% of all degrees from domestic students were women; in 2017/18 it was already 55% (Statistics Austria, 2021).

Despite all the adjustments, there are still significant differences that lead to wage differentials. A noticeable difference can be seen in the choice of profession. Among young women, the most popular apprenticeships in 2019 were retail (22% of all female apprentices), office clerk (11%) and hairdresser (8%). Among young men, the three most common apprenticeships in 2019 were metal technology (13% of all male apprentices), electrical engineering (12%) and automotive engineering (10%). The differences in the choice of occupation lead to wage differences as early as the first year of the apprenticeship, because the apprenticeship remuneration in the occupations chosen by young women is typically lower than in the occupations chosen by young men.

Similar differences can also be seen in the choice of course. In 2005, 10% of all male and 8% of all female students were enrolled in a degree in mathematics, engineering, natural sciences or technology (MINT). In the 2017 winter semester, 14% of all male and 11% of all female students studied in a MINT subject. These differences also lead to wage differences, as MINT graduates typically receive higher wages than graduates from other courses.

Mothers take part in the labor market more often than 15 years ago and also take shorter parental leave, but they leave the labor market longer than women in Scandinavian countries (Kleven et al., 2019). They therefore gain less work experience on average than fathers and this not only leads to lower incomes, but also to lower hourly wages.

Wage differences can also arise from systematic differences in wage negotiations or from discrimination against women by employers, for example on the basis of social norms, prejudices or legal reasons (e.g. prohibition of night work, etc.). Here, too, our investigations and further scientific evidence show that the importance of these factors has decreased.

Covid-19

The impact of the pandemic on the wage gap cannot yet be assessed. Women are affected differently by the crisis than men and these 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 (Bock-Schappelwein, Famira-Mühlberger and Mayrhuber, 2020). At the end of 2020, women were more affected by unemployment than men (Bock-Schappelwein, Huemer and Hyll, 2021). If these sectors of the economy create jobs again after the crisis less frequently than other sectors, then relatively more women than men will change sectors. Such industry changes typically 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 particularly for childcare, more than men (Berghammer and Beham-Rabanser, 2020). 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 can follow for this reason.

It is therefore to be feared that the wage gap between women and men will rise again in the coming years. Accompanying measures are therefore necessary so that the developments of recent years are not lost. This includes in particular political measures that allow mothers and fathers to participate in working life; Promotion of transition and re-entry into working life; Measures for further training and promotion of qualification measures; and cushioning the negative effects of home schooling and distance learning, especially the different effects on boys and girls.

Swell:

Berghammer, C., Beham-Rabanser, M. (2020), “Where's the time? Paid and unpaid work by women and men in the Corona crisis”, https://viecer.univie.ac.at/corona- blog / corona-blog-posts / blog57 /.

Bock-Schappelwein, J., Huemer, U., Hyll, W. (2021), “Employment 2020: Balance after one year of the COVID-19 pandemic”, WIFO Research Briefs 1/2021.

Bock-Schappelwein, J., Famira-Mühlberger, U., Mayrhuber, C. (2020), “COVID-19: Economic Effects on Women”, WIFO Research Briefs 3/2020.

Böheim, R., Fink M., Zulehner, C. (2021), The development of the wage gap between women and men in Austria from 2005 to 2019, WIFO Research Briefs 2/2021.

Kleven, H., Landais, C., Posch, J., Steinhauer, A., Zweimüller, J. (2019), “Child Penalties across Countries: Evidence and Explanations.” AEA Papers and Proceedings, 109: 122-26.

Statistics Austria (2021), “Degrees of degree courses by academic year by gender”, statcube.at, requested on: February 19, 2021.

We may not be prepared for a large-scale “digital blackout”. Researchers are studying the consequences.

No drinking water, no cash, no online communication – a scenario that hardly anyone in Austria can imagine. But we could be confronted with these consequences if an integral part of our lives were to fail: the Internet.

According to Statistics Austria, around 90 percent of Austrian households have internet access. The “Isidor” research project, which is headed by the Institute for Production Management and Logistics at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, is to investigate the consequences of a long-term, large-scale failure and develop plans for state crisis and disaster management.

Hardly researched

“The entire social life, economic and private, is permeated by two technologies: electricity and information and communication technology,” says project employee Jaro Krieger-Lamina from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) of the futurezone. While one has been dealing with a long-term power failure (“blackout”) for a long time, such an Internet failure is still largely unexplored.

The blackout emergency plans would also serve to cope with an Internet failure, but what the infrastructure looks like in this country, which areas would be particularly affected and which measures would be suitable, is the subject of research.

Designed to be fail-safe

Basically, the Internet is designed to be decentralized and fail-safe: if a node in the network structure is lost, the information can be transmitted via other nodes. According to the expert, however, there are also a few neuralgic points. If attackers bring this to a standstill, large areas of the Internet would be affected. “But that's not an easy thing.”

But it is possible. Massive cyber attacks occurred in Estonia in 2007, including against authorities. Public life was severely restricted as a result. There was also a massive failure in Sierra Leone in 2018, and other countries on the West African coast were also affected. A submarine cable was damaged here. Depending on the extent, software and hardware problems can be resolved relatively quickly. If, on the other hand, there were a longer power outage that would also paralyze the Internet, we would have more serious problems, says the expert.

Dependency

Regardless of the cause, the research team deals with the effects of an Internet failure. The digitization processes of the past decades have created a great dependency. “Today, numerous processes run over the Internet. At the same time, one has little experience with supply interruptions in a company that normally works reliably. ”For cost reasons, many companies also use cloud services, which several branches can access. “This not only raises the question of data protection or industrial espionage, but also of what is still running when you can no longer access it,” he explains.

If a large-scale internet failure lasts longer than 3 days, the question of logistics also arises. “Warehousing is reduced in many areas because it causes high costs,” he says. Production takes place “just in time” and goods are delivered when required. Since the coordination is internet-based, supplies could be omitted.

No cash

The drinking water supply is also internet-based and could temporarily stall. According to a report by the Austrian Association for Gas and Water, the control of the drinking water systems can be switched to remote control independent of the Internet in an emergency. Traffic would also slow down, especially since traffic lights are controlled via the Internet. ATMs would also fail. According to Krieger-Lamina, research is still under way to determine which of the most urgent infrastructural problems would be and how well operators of critical infrastructures are prepared for such a crisis.

Hospitals are prepared for infrastructure failures. You can manage without an external computer network – inpatient treatment can be maintained. First of all, there is the all-clear: According to Krieger-Lamina, a nationwide internet failure is fundamentally very unlikely. However, it doesn't hurt to be prepared for it anyway.

Allegedly for more than a billion dollars. There is no confirmation.

According to a newspaper report, the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has sold its stake in the US biotech company Moderna. AstraZeneca sold its 7.7 percent stake for more than $ 1 billion after shares in the US pharmaceutical company soared over the coronavirus vaccine breakthrough, The Times reported on Sunday.

A partnership between the two biotechnology companies would remain in place for other treatments, the report said. Moderna, whose vaccine is approved in the US for emergency use, expects sales of $ 18.4 billion in 2021 due to the vaccine. Both AstraZeneca and Moderna initially did not respond to requests for comment.

Three corona vaccines are approved in the USA: In addition to the Moderna product, the vaccine from the Mainz-based pharmaceutical company BioNTech and its US partner Pfizer and, as of today, Sunday, also the vaccine from the US company Johnson & Johnson. In the EU, the vaccines from BioNTech / Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca are on the market. The EU Commission has ordered vaccination doses for 200 million people from Johnson & Johnson.