Top Economics News

General Motors announced Wednesday consider selling its manufacturing plant in Strasbourg gearboxes and be looking for investors willing to maintain the site activity.

The U.S. automaker, which announced in February an alliance with PSA Peugeot Citroen, has appointed an advisory bank and committed a "strategic review" concerning both the production engineer neering and development of this plant, says in a statement.

He was willing to explore the internal and external solutions to find "viable alternatives and potential solutions to secure the future of the site".

General Motors intends to favor buyers who will continue the work site, which employs a thousand people. 

This file may be one of the first industrial sensitive topics for the new president Francois Hollande, in a context of overcapacity in the hunt for European automotive sector.

Last year, the plant produced 280,000 automatic transmissions with six speeds, mainly for GM brands and BMW, mostly for vehicles assembled outside Europe.

This is the second time that General Motors is trying to lease the site. During the 2008 financial crisis, the company charged with liquidating the assets of the American manufacturer had not found a buyer. In 2011, a year after his brief for the procedure of bankruptcy, GM had bought the plant for a symbolic euro.

At the time, employees had accepted a two-year wage freeze in exchange for guarantees on jobs.

"There are several commitments in place to continue the manufacture of transmissions for years," assured Jim Cain, spokesman for GM.

Adecco is Tuesday first-quarter results better than expected, while announcing that the European environment is expected to remain difficult as North America, the second largest market of digital ; ro a global placement of personnel, should instead continue to do well.

The net result of the first three months of the yearâ increased 12% to 112 million euros, while analysts polled by Reuters had expected on average 100 million.

"We started in 2012. The turnover of the first quarter of 2012 is almost the same level as in the first quarter of 2011, a solid performance given the headwinds that blow in Europe, "says Patrick de Maeseneire, Director General ral of the Swiss group, said in a statement

. "Our sales in North America continued to hold up well." Revenues

the period rose 2% to 5.035 billion euros, against a consensus of 4.991 billion ..

……. Randstand, Dutch rival Adecco, spoke about the uncertain developments in Europe while the U.S. pre Manpower said ; see a double digit decline in southern Europe in the second quarter

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Deutsche Lufthansa on Wednesday released a quarterly loss higher than expected, attributed to the surging cost of jet fuel.

Operating loss for the first quarter amounted to 381 million euros against a negative balance of 169 million a year earlier. The consensus gave a loss of 289 million euros.

The German airline, which must publish all of its accounts Thursday, has also reported a turnover up 5.6% to 6.6 billion euros.

Lufthansa has also reported a net loss of EUR 397 million against a loss of 507 million a year earlier.

It anticipates for 2012 an operating profit of around 500 million euros.

The Eramet Group, whose sales fell 10% in the first quarter, said Thursday that operating profit in the first half should be lower than the first half 2012 due to the falling price of nickel and manganese.

The turnover of the mining group totaled 877 million euros in Q1 2012 against 973 million a year earlier (-7% at constant perimeter.)

The decline is 20% in the activity of manganese and nickel in 13% compared to first quarter 2011, while world production of stainless steel fell by around 3%. 

"As previously announced, average prices of nickel and manganese are the beginning of the year at levels below the current average of 2011 ", said in a statement the group, who still expects an increase of its turnover in the second quarter compared to first quarter 2012.

The countries pledged to reduce its public deficit to three points of GDP by 2012. To achieve this, the government announced tax increases and lower spending. The Spanish head of government right, Mariano Rajoy.

Brussels had requested an additional effort of 20 billion euros. Spain is best. The Spanish government on Friday approved its draft budget for 2012, which provides "over 27 billion euros' savings and new revenues, including through the wage freeze for civil servants and lower departmental budgets by 16.9% on average.

"We are facing an extreme situation," admitted the government spokesman Soraya Saenz de Santamaria after the Council of Ministers, and "our first obligation is to return to public accounts cleaned up", while the Spain pledged to cut the end of 2012 the government deficit, from 8.51% to 5.3% of GDP.  

Spain is the country with the least restated its fiscal 2011, the experts calculated at Credit Suisse. Its structural deficit (independent conditions) was reduced by 1 percentage point of GDP. A figure that is stain when compared to the effort in neighboring countries: more than 3 points in Portugal and almost 6 percentage points in Greece. To compensate for the delay in 2011, Spain had to work twice as hard. It's done. At least in part.

Most analysts expected the need for Spain to find about 50 billion euros between savings and new revenues, taking into account the recession, which should reduce the Spanish GDP by 1.7% this year. The rest of the effort must come from particular regions and municipalities, the fragile financial health since the bursting of the housing bubble in 2008.

Madrid, in any case, does not completely stifle the economy by embarking on a program of excessive rigor.

The return to a lower deficit will be "not achieved at any price," warned Soraya Saenz, stressing the need to "support those who need it most and does not block growth and job creation "In a country with record unemployment (22.85%). Thus, "we decided to keep the revaluation of pensions, freeze the salaries of civil servants rather than decrease, maintain unemployment benefits and social spending, including grants," she said. Similarly, "we will not raise VAT to not harm the consumer and the economic recovery, but we will increase the corporation tax for large companies."

When the direction of the steel giant still does not guarantee the works council restarting blast furnace site, the steelworkers maintain pressure. The "blockers" ArcelorMittal has lit a big fire burning before the plant Florange.

Employees who require restarting blast furnaces Florange dormant for several months, occupying part of the site since February 20. This Friday, they were evicted by the police when he blocked a railway line, an operation of glazed jostling between the police and the steelworkers who sang the Marseillaise while shouting "Thank Sarko".

Find pictures in the fight to save the ArcelorMittal Florange

Meanwhile at the headquarters of ArcelorMittal France in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), the management assured the unions that the maintenance of a blast furnace Florange would start "very soon", but without mentioning an upturn in the sector hot site. In a statement, management has confirmed "the temporary suspension of part of its facilities Florange for the second quarter due to the difficult economic environment". "Two million euros will be allocated to additional maintenance work to ensure that the liquid phase can restart in the second half in anticipation of an economic recovery," she said.

This Thursday, Nicolas Sarkozy said on France Inter that the P6 "in the second half would go back" after revealing he had the day before a meeting with Lakshmi Mittal, CEO of the No. 1 global steel industry. But ArcelorMittal had conditioned this boot an economic recovery. The presidential candidate said it had obtained a number of global steel industry that invests 17 million to safeguard Florange.

Find our survey to find out what the ads are really worth of Nicolas Sarkozy?

In any case, unions are skeptical. Further reading: "The promise of Sarkozy, it's cat pee."

Several Directors of Veolia Environnement, whose CEO of EDF Proglio, are preparing to head the group's CEO, Mr. Frérot, reports financial daily Les Echos in its edition Monday.

The former Minister of Ecology Jean-Louis Borloo is among prospective successors, the newspaper said, predicting that a Board of Directors of Veolia Environnement scheduled on February 29 will be crucial.

Contacted by Reuters, a spokeswoman for Veolia declined to comment.

Repair cracks appeared on the wings of the Airbus A380 jumbo could cost up to 100 million euros in the aircraft manufacturer, writes Der Spiegel Sunday.

The identification and repair of cracks on the 69 aircraft already in service would cost in themselves within 70 million, thirty million then being attributable to a change production procedures, continues the weekly said, citing experts and people of Airbus.

Der Spiegel also quoted a spokesman for Airbus, an EADS subsidiary, which states that a long-term technical solution will be found by the summer, without comment on the cost. 

European authorities are preparing to extend the inspection process to all Airbus A380 fleet after the discovery of cracks on the wings of some copies of trè s jumbo jet, said on Wednesday sources close to the matter.

Moreover, in an interview published Monday in WirtschaftsWoche, Louis Welsh, CEO of EADS, said he wanted make 350 million euros in savings this year by unifying procedures for various business functions.

He added that in view of recent successes in the U.S., EADS should seriously consider building a plant there.

Welsh also said that the A320neo should be profitable in its first delivery in October 2015. "Development costs are limited and therefore we will have depreciated even before the start of production" No he said.

The EDF Group, through its subsidiary EDF Energies Nouvelles Spread (EDF ENR), today announced it filed Friday an offer for the resumption of Photowatt, the only French manufacturer of solar cells ; silicon.

Nicolas Sarkozy announced Thursday that he will present next week a bailout of Photowatt, the leading French photovoltaic, involving EDF.

The company employs 441 employees at Bourgoin (Isère), was placed in receivership after filing for bankruptcy last November. 

The Head of State, speaking during a visit to the Fessenheim nuclear power plant, said he would travel next week Photowatt "because thanks to EDF, we pre ; senterons employees Photowatt a formula of industrial recovery. "

In a statement, EDF said that Photowatt owns 40% of PV Alliance, the leading research and development in the field of photovoltaic technology, in which EDF ENR has already a 40% stake alongside the CEA (20%).

"The offer of EDF ENR will be conditioned to include the recovery of 100% of PV Alliance and to obtain an exclusive worldwide license on heterojunction technology, called to replace the current technology in the years to come, "the group wrote. 

"Given its presence in Photowatt through PV Alliance, EDF ENR appears as the natural candidate for the resumption of Photowatt," said Jean-Louis Mathias, Chief Executive ; EXECUTIVE group in charge of renewable energy.

After the loss of triple A, the real estate professionals were inclined rather to an increase in lending rates. But the opposite occurs in February, according to the online broker best rate.

Contrary to the fears widely reported by the loss of triple-A, mortgage rates are down slightly for this month. This is apparent from a study of online broker, Meilleurtaux.com. In February, 45% of banks show declines of 0.15 points on average, 31% have left the stable. Only 24% have made gains. Overall, the average credit rate stood at 4.28% against 4.31% in January.

OAT rates down

"We do not expect this result" surprising Sandrine Allonier, head of economic research meilleurtaux.com. It must be said that the rate of OAT (comparable Treasury obligations), that is to say the rate at which France takes the 10-year bond has not increased. The Hexagon borrows at preferential rates. And on the contrary, it borrows a better rate. "For example, in February it reached 2.89%, whereas before the loss of the triple A, it was 3.40%," says Sandrine Allonier. Second explanation, the rates of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the interbank rate, the interest rate charged between banks themselves, remain stable. Finally, the loss of the AAA had been anticipated by financial markets and banks have rebuilt their capital. Consequently, they can lower their lending rates long and short term.

March, the month in real estate transactions

"Presumably, this slight decline will continue in March, one month is very rich in real estate transactions." Banks are trying to position themselves in relation to competition. Hence their strategy to attract new customers by lower lending rates in the long and short term. "Some had rates at 4.30%, which rose 4% in February. These banks want to take their game," said Ms. Allonier. Before continuing, "the banks are still selective about the cases. All require a contribution of 10%."

Apply for credit up

The increase in the number of credit reports is the second conclusion of the study meilleurtaux.com. A figure up 20% compared with December, while still down 2% year on year. Borrowers do not turn away the real estate market. There are still a safe haven, especially since many of them expect lower prices in 2012, "the order of 5% in some areas," said Sandrine Allonier. However, "there is a caution for future buyers: they are occasionally more likely to assess their borrowing capacity before they have found a property. Those who led a project with a signed sales agreement fell 4% over a year. "