Finance

The cell phone and internet tariffs of the big ones – A1, Magenta and Drei – are up to 70 (!) Percent more expensive. That smells like price agreement for observers.

While the tariffs for Internet and mobile phones for A1, Magenta and Drei will be increased at the same time from March onwards, the price increases are also making waves among the small providers who have rented their networks. Experts do not rule out that the rise in prices for the big ones will force the little ones to catch up with the prices. At Bob (in the A1 network), for example, a new flat-rate service fee will be due as early as March.

There are two things that particularly annoy observers. On the one hand, the tariffs are being increased across the board by one to five euros, but in one case the price increase is even 70 percent. All providers justify the inflation with increasing network utilization, investments in network expansion and tariffs that no longer cover costs. On the other hand, all tariffs are increased at the same time, which leaves observers with the smell of unauthorized price agreements.

However, it is very difficult to prove such a thing, according to the Federal Competition Authority (BWB) and Telekom Regulator RTR. “From a visual point of view, that is certainly not ideal,” says Theodor Thanner, General Director of the Federal Competition Authority, opposite help.ORF.at. “A stupid coincidence” could also be the simultaneous price increase, says Klaus Steinmaurer, RTR managing director for telecommunications, to the “Wiener Zeitung”.

A piquant coincidence, because it is not the first time that mobile operators have increased their prices together and over time. But even if a price agreement should be behind the increases, one can only prove this with evidence – and this requires means such as house searches, for example. The competition authority now wants to examine further procedural steps. However, not a single person affected can avoid the price increase in March.

Sentiment is turning: Mainly because of the economic recovery in the USA and China

Container port in Qingdao, China

The mood among German exporters is better than it has been for almost two and a half years in view of the expected upturn in key trading partners such as the USA and China. The barometer for the export expectations of the industry climbed from 7.5 to 10.7 points in February, as the Munich Ifo Institute announced on Tuesday, citing its monthly survey of 2,300 companies.

A higher value was last observed in September 2018. “The good economic activity in China and the rising production in the USA are helping German exporters,” said Ifo President Clemens Fuest. The world's two largest economies are the most important buyers of goods “Made in Germany”.

The chemical industry and mechanical engineering companies each expect significant growth in their foreign business. The same applies to mechanical engineering. “The automobile manufacturers were able to overcome their three-month intermediate low,” explained Fuest. “You are now expecting more orders from abroad.” For manufacturers of electrical equipment, export expectations even rose to their highest level since February 2018. For the furniture and clothing industries, however, the foreign market remains difficult: here the companies assume it will that sales will decline significantly.

Studies show that the nasal spray from a Viennese pharmaceutical company protects against corona infection. Since then the Marinomed share has been booming.

The “Coldamaris pro” nasal spray is effective against colds, costs 10 euros in the pharmacy and has been on the market since 2008. But the spray from the Viennese biotech company Marinomed is likely to have one more property: it should offer “significant protection” against corona infection. This is proven by a new clinical study on hospital staff who cared for corona patients.

As soon as the study became known, a run on shares in the pharmaceutical company began, the price jumped 20 percent to up to 147 euros. The spray with Carragelose, an active ingredient in red algae, “keeps the virus from infecting other cells,” says another study by the University of Erlangen. The “duration and severity” of symptoms would be reduced. Even the German “Society for Hospital Hygiene” recommends the spray.

The founding couple Eva and Andreas Grassauer are now planning the next trick: lozenges that work in the throat against the corona virus.

For new products. Online banking continues to gain in importance in everyday banking.

A swan song has been held on the classic bank advisor for a long time. A lot happens online anyway, so the general tenor. But the picture is not that clear, according to a survey by the consulting firm EY. According to this, 70 percent of domestic bank customers continue to purchase new products from their advisor. Only 17 percent do this via their web banking, as the representative survey of 1,000 customers shows.

The bank advisor is the undisputed number one with 64 percent when it comes to obtaining information about products. “Bank advisors and personal conversations with customers remain the most important sales vehicles,” says Philipp Schöckler, Director of Banking Advisory at EY Austria. “Personal contact is essential for important monetary decisions.”

Complex content

It takes time until a banking product is actually purchased because of its complex content. Almost nine out of ten customers agree that you need to know a lot of details, at least in part, and a lot to understand a product. For more than one in two people, the products and services offered are rather difficult to understand.

In everyday banking business such as transactions, the tide is turned and digital independence is much more pronounced: Half of domestic bank customers use the bank's online banking area on their laptop or PC. A good third prefer a personal conversation with a consultant.

The USA is strictly against the gas pipeline – and the threatened sanctions are having an effect.

The threats of sanctions by the USA against the German-Russian Baltic Sea gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 are having an effect: after considerable pressure from the government in Washington, at least 18 European companies have now ended their participation in the controversial project or have promised to withdraw, as stated in a report by the US State Department to Congress. The Austrian oil and gas group OMV is also involved in the financing of the gas pipeline.

According to the US, the companies include the German industrial service provider Bilfinger, based in Mannheim, and the Munich Re insurer Munich Re Syndicate Limited.

So far, the US has only imposed sanctions on the Russian company KVT-RUS, which operates the Fortuna lay-ship, because of Nord Stream 2 – the government of the Republican US President Donald Trump announced these punitive measures shortly before the end of her term in January. The company and the ship are also specifically mentioned in the new report. Contrary to expectations, other companies are not punished or threatened with punitive measures.

Republicans had therefore sharply criticized the administration of the new Democratic US President Joe Biden. Senator Ted Cruz said at the weekend: “The Biden administration is signaling that it is ready to allow the pipeline to be completed, with catastrophic consequences for American national security and the energy security of our European allies.” The US State Department forwarded the report to Congress last Friday, but has not yet made it public. The report was available to the dpa in Washington on Monday.

Most of the companies that have ended or are ending their participation in Nord Stream 2 are insurance groups, according to the report. Most of these companies are based in the UK. The Swiss Zurich Insurance Group and the Axa Group, based in Paris, have also ended their work on Nord Stream 2, according to the US State Department.

The report signed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also explicitly addresses Germany's position. “The German government is still fully behind the Nord Stream 2 project,” it says there. The German government emphasizes that it is a necessary economic project. “Germany firmly rejects US sanctions as an attack on the sovereignty of Germany and the EU.”

State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday that the withdrawal of numerous companies from the project shows that the government's actions are working. He stressed that the US kept up the sanctions threats. “We made it clear that companies risk penalties for participating in Nord Stream 2.” But one will continue to consult with allies and not surprise them with unsolicited actions.

The United States are storming the project because they fear that their partners in Europe are too dependent on Russia. At the end of 2019, construction work on the pipeline was stopped shortly before completion after the US had enacted an initial sanctions law (Peesa) against the special ships that laid the pipes. However, US critics argue that the US wants to sell its own gas in Europe.

Lithuania's Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis proposed a construction freeze on Nord Stream 2 until the Russian parliamentary elections. “Let's give Vladimir Putin the opportunity to hold a free State Duma election this autumn with the participation of the opposition. Until then, let's stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,” he said in a message from the Foreign Office in Vilnius after the EU foreign ministers' meeting quoted. Lithuania, like the US and some EU countries, is against the pipeline.

After an escalating dispute between the Australian government and Facebook. Internet platforms should pay for media use.

After the escalated dispute between the Australian government and Facebook over payment for publishing content, European publishers and Microsoft have come out in favor of a model similar to that in Australia. Publishers associations and the US software company announced on Monday in a joint statement that they were working on a solution in Europe that would ensure that publishers are paid for the use of their content by dominant Internet platforms.

It is also specifically about a mediation instrument. The whole thing should be in accordance with the new guidelines on copyright, which must be implemented in national law across the EU by the summer.

The argument is not over yet

In Australia, a dispute between the government and Facebook is currently building up. The US company blocked news pages on its platform for Australian users on Thursday. Since then, Facebook users in Australia can no longer share national or international journalistic content. The company is thus opposed to a bill by the Australian government that will force companies like Google and Facebook to pay local media companies if they distribute their content.

The government wants to achieve that advertising revenue is distributed more fairly. Facebook argues that Australian publishers per se benefit when their posts are shared on Facebook – and thus achieve greater reach.

“Referee” provided

The publishers' associations and Microsoft, which operates the Internet search engine Bing, which competes with Google, among other things, further announced: The joint solution aims to ensure that so-called gatekeepers – i.e. platforms that make content available – make payments for the use of this content to press publishers. And it contains “arbitration provisions that ensure that fair agreements can be negotiated”. The Australian model provides a kind of arbitrator who decides in the event of a dispute and sets a price.

Those involved complained: “Although press publishers in the EU have been granted ancillary copyrights, negotiations with such gatekeepers will not lead to fair results if additional regulatory measures are not taken” in order to contain platforms with a dominant position through framework conditions such as national laws. In December, the EU presented a legislative package aimed at putting tech giants in their place in many areas.

There was a shortfall of $ 5.8 billion. Sales slumped 80 percent to $ 2.2 billion.

The corona pandemic caused enormous losses for the cruise company Royal Caribbean in the past year. Overall, Royal Caribbean went into the red in 2020 with 5.8 billion dollars (4.8 billion euros), while the bottom line was a minus of 1.4 billion in the final quarter. “This crisis is the most difficult in the history of our company,” the tourism giant admitted on Monday in Miami. Revenues fell by around 80 percent in 2020 to $ 2.2 billion.

The annual report was still well received on the stock exchange, with the share increasing by more than ten percent in US trading. Because confidence that the crisis will end is increasing. The number of new bookings has already risen sharply since the beginning of the year, and a lot of demand has evidently built up during the pandemic, the management said in a conference call after the balance sheet was presented. The prospect of a comeback in the industry also caused the shares of competitors such as Aida mother Carnival or Norwegian Cruise Line to rise sharply.

US aviation authority FAA announced appropriate emergency policy. Denver incident is further bad news.

Bad news for the American aircraft manufacturer Boeing and the propulsion manufacturer Pratt & Whitney: After an engine failure on a Boeing 777 near Denver, this type of wide-body jet is threatened with a flight ban. In Japan and Great Britain, the machines with this drive from Pratt & Whitney are no longer allowed to take off for the time being. The US aviation authority FAA announced a corresponding emergency policy.

“This will likely mean that some aircraft have to be taken out of service,” said FAA chief Steve Dickson on Sunday (local time).

Rubble crash

On Saturday, after an engine failure, large aircraft parts of a United Airlines (UA) Boeing 777 crashed into residential areas as debris near Denver. A video shot by a passenger shows flames emanating from the right engine during flight. At this point the panel had already plunged into the depths.

According to the FAA, the right engine failed shortly after takeoff. The plane landed safely at Denver International Airport with 241 people on board. There were no reports of injuries – either on board or on the ground. The plane was on its way from Denver to the capital of Hawaii, Honolulu.

Boeing recommended that airlines leave the world's 128 aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney PW-4000-112 engines on the ground for the time being. This applies as long as the investigation by the US accident investigation authority NTSB continues and until the FAA has drawn up the necessary rules for an inspection of the drives. 69 of the machines are currently in operation and 59 are in storage.

Three types of drive

The Boeing 777 wide-body jet has been built since the 1990s. When purchasing, customers could choose between three drive types. The Munich engine manufacturer MTU is also involved in the Pratt & Whitney drive. Many machines in the series are equipped with competing engines from General Electric or Rolls-Royce. These are not affected by the current problem.

Boeing says it supports the decision by the Japanese Civil Aviation Authority and the FAA to suspend operations and is working with them. Pratt & Whitney also announced that they would support the changed inspection intervals for the drive type. The announcement of further investigation results is at the discretion of the NTSB.

Flight bans

As a precaution, the Japanese Ministry of Transport ordered a flight ban in its own country for aircraft equipped with the affected engines. This affects 13 aircraft from Japan Airlines (JAL) and 19 aircraft from All Nippon Airways (ANA), as the Ministry announced in Tokyo.

The same applies to Great Britain. The machines with the engine type are not allowed to use the airspace of the country for the time being, announced the British Transport Minister Grant Shapps and the aviation authority CAA on the news service Twitter on Monday. British airlines are not affected.

According to its own information, the European aviation authority EASA is in contact with the FAA. They have asked for more information about the cause so that measures can be taken if necessary.

Precautionary measure

United Airlines announced that it will be voluntarily removing 24 Pratt & Whitney 4000 Series Boeing 777 aircraft from its flight schedule as a precautionary measure. It should be ensured that these aircraft meet the strict safety standards and can be put back into service. There are currently 52 of these aircraft in the fleet – 24 active and 28 in storage.

According to a spokesman, the Lufthansa Group only uses General Electric engines that are not affected by the companies Lufthansa Cargo, Swiss and Austrian.

The incident is further bad news for the US company Boeing, which only came under pressure last week due to possible production defects in the long-haul 787 “Dreamliner”. The FAA had therefore ordered inspections of around 222 aircraft because there was a risk of damage to so-called decompression panels for separating the passenger area.

Troubled group

The group is already badly hit by the consequences of the corona crisis and the debacle over its best-selling 737 Max series, which was banned from flights worldwide for more than a year and a half after two crashes with a total of 346 deaths. In the past fiscal year, the company had a record loss of more than $ 11.9 billion.

Crypto market under pressure. After the Bitcoin rally on the weekend, double-digit drops on Monday.

The market for digital currencies lives up to its unsteady reputation once again: on Monday, the rates of numerous digital currencies collapsed, at least at times, by a double-digit percentage. The crypto rally only reached highs at the weekend. The two largest Internet currencies Bitcoin and Ether had climbed to record levels. On Monday, however, things went drastically downhill.

Bitcoin, the oldest and by far the largest digital currency in the market, fell at times by around 17 percent to $ 47,400 at the beginning of the week. It was last at $ 53,000. Bitcoin was still several thousand dollars higher at the weekend. A record high of $ 58,354 was reached on the Bitstamp trading platform.

Ether course also fallen

The price of the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of market value, Ether, also fell significantly on Monday. After the $ 2,000 mark was broken for the first time on the weekend, an ether cost $ 1,550 at the beginning of the week. The last time it stood at $ 1,700.

The market value of all roughly 8,500 digital currencies fell from $ 1.76 trillion at the weekend to $ 1.5 trillion. Most recently it was around $ 1.6 trillion. The value of all Bitcoins in circulation fell well below a trillion dollars after the round mark was first exceeded on Friday. It then hit a high of $ 1.085 trillion over the weekend.

Speculation about reasons

There was much speculation in the market about the reasons for the price setbacks. It is conceivable that the price increase on the weekend was mainly driven by private investors, while professional investors created selling pressure on Monday. This could have reacted to statements of the multibillionaire and Tesla boss Elon Musk from the weekend, who had described the Bitcoin price on Twitter as “apparently high”.

The crypto supporter Musk has often caused price swings in digital currencies in recent weeks. For its part, the electric car manufacturer Tesla caused a run on Bitcoin after it became known that Tesla had invested billions in the cryptocurrency and that it wants to accept Bitcoin as a means of payment in the future.

Meanwhile, the large US bank JPMorgan pointed to the low market liquidity of Bitcoin in a study published over the weekend. The market liquidity of gold, with which digital currencies are often compared, is significantly higher than that of Bitcoin. Low market liquidity can favor larger price fluctuations.

Apple will be the world's largest manufacturer for the first time in years in the fourth quarter of 2020. Samsung ranked behind in terms of market share.

In addition to the devices, retailers also try to sell various types of insurance to consumers.

Thanks to the new 5G-capable iPhone 12, Apple has risen to become the world's largest manufacturer of smartphones for the first time in four years, according to data from market researchers at Gartner. In the fourth quarter, the US group overtook its South Korean competitor Samsung with a market share of 20.8 percent, which only came in at 16.2 percent, as Gartner announced on Monday.

A year earlier, Samsung was just ahead with 17.3 percent versus 17.1 percent. The demand for devices for the new 5G mobile communications standard helped the industry to cushion the slump in sales in the final spurt in 2020. According to Gartner, 384.6 million smartphones were sold worldwide between October and December, 5.4 percent fewer than a year earlier.

Samsung with sales decline of almost 15 percent

For the year as a whole, sales to end users fell by 12.5 percent to just under 1.35 billion. Samsung maintained the top position with a market share of 18.8 percent, but had to accept a drop in sales of 14.6 percent. With a plus of 3.3 percent, Apple was the only winner among the top 5 worldwide alongside the Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi, and with a market share of 14.8 percent it overtook its Chinese competitor Huawei, which sold almost a quarter fewer smartphones and was only on 13.5 percent market share came. Huawei's access to apps from Google was made more difficult due to US sanctions.

Gartner market researcher Anshul Gupta is more confident about this year: “The growing demand for affordable 5G smartphones outside of China will drive sales figures up in 2021.”