France’s Lafarge admits to having cooperated with Syrian terrorists in 2013 and 2014.
Holcim unit Lafarge fined for supporting IS
(Bloomberg) / bet. Holcim’s Lafarge unit has pleaded guilty in a US court to collaborating with the Islamic State (IS) in Syria to continue operating a cement factory in the country. Lafarge will pay a fine of $778 million. According to prosecutors, this is the first time a company has admitted to helping terrorists in a US court.
Lafarge has been under investigation for years on charges of having funded IS and other terrorist groups in Syria to protect the plant. The incidents took place in 2013 and 2014. The French company said it accepts responsibility for the behavior of local managers who violated the company’s code. The Holcim group, which took over Lafarge in 2015, emphasized that it was not involved in the process.
In France, the matter has been under investigation since 2018. An indictment of “aiding in crimes against humanity” was admitted this spring.
Microsoft is said to have laid off almost 1,000 employees this week
The Microsoft headquarters in Beijing.
top. Microsoft is said to have laid off almost 1,000 people in several departments this week. This was reported by the Reuters news agency on Tuesday (October 18), citing the American news site Axios. The layoffs affect less than 1 percent of the workforce, the American technology company had 221,000 employees in the summer.
As Reuters writes, Microsoft has not yet officially confirmed the layoffs. In recent months, several technology companies have responded to slowing economic growth due to higher interest rates, rising inflation and the energy crisis in Europe by cutting jobs.
Lufthansa doubles profit target for 2022
Strong demand for tickets and another record result from the freight subsidiary Lufthansa Cargo should help Lufthansa make billions in profits in the current financial year.
sev. After a surprisingly strong summer quarter, Lufthansa expects a profit in the billions in day-to-day business this year. While many pilots of the low-cost subsidiary Eurowings went on strike on Monday, the Group Executive Board around Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr doubled its forecast for 2022 in the afternoon. Adjusted operating profit (adjusted EBIT) should exceed the one billion euro mark, as the company announced. The group cited the strong demand for tickets and another record result from the freight subsidiary Lufthansa Cargo as reasons.
With its profit forecast, the Lufthansa Executive Board exceeded the average expectations of analysts. At the beginning of August, CEO Spohr raised his target to more than 500 million euros. Industry experts had recently assumed an average of a good 800 million euros. Lufthansa intends to present its full quarterly figures on October 27th.
Because of hurricane “Ian”: Swiss Re reports quarterly loss
The Swiss Re headquarters in Zurich.
amused Swiss Re posted a loss of around $500 million in the third quarter. As the reinsurer announced in a report on Tuesday morning (October 18), the insured losses for natural catastrophes were significantly higher than expected. Hurricane Ian alone, which caused severe damage in Florida in September, cost Swiss Re around 1.3 billion dollars. The hurricane is said to have caused insured losses of around 50 to 65 billion dollars.
Swiss Re also notes that it is unlikely to miss its profitability target for 2022 – 10 percent return on equity. However, she is sticking to her ambitious medium-term goals for 2024, which she presented to investors in the spring: These include a return on equity of 14 percent. Swiss Re will present the complete quarterly figures on October 28th.
Swiss Re’s ad hoc announcement comes as little surprise to the markets; Financial analysts had also expected that “Ian” would weigh on the quarterly result by around $1.3 billion. Dealing with natural catastrophes is part of the core business of a reinsurer. In view of climate change, high inflation and the ongoing brisk construction activity in locations exposed to flooding, it will remain a challenge for Swiss Re and for the entire industry to correctly set the prices and scope of insurance benefits.
Prices for used cars have risen by 28 percent since the pandemic began
Anyone who buys a used car today pays an average of 28 percent more than before the pandemic.
top. Prices for used cars have risen significantly since the first quarter of 2020, as the comparison service Comparis wrote in a statement on Tuesday (October 18). While a used car still cost an average of 23,161 francs at the beginning of 2020, today, in the third quarter of 2022, you pay 29,550 francs. The prices for electric cars have risen by half, for hybrid vehicles you pay 26 percent more than before the pandemic.
At the same time, the supply of used cars has fallen by 29 percent, according to Comparis. The cause is delivery bottlenecks for new cars. Due to long waiting times for new cars, there is a stronger demand for used vehicles. Since fewer new cars could be bought, fewer used cars came onto the market at the same time.
Despite falling Corona sales: Roche continues moderate growth
The Roche Towers in Basel.
(dpa) The Swiss pharmaceutical group Roche continued its moderate growth in the first nine months of 2022. The group succeeded in doing this despite falling Corona sales in the third quarter. In the first nine months, the company had sales of 47 billion francs, an increase of 1 percent compared to the previous year, as Roche announced on Tuesday (18 October). At constant exchange rates, sales increased by 2 percent.
Looking at the two divisions, the larger pharmaceutical division contributed 33.2 billion Swiss francs to sales, which is 1 percent below the previous year’s figure. Significantly lower sales of Covid-19-related products and biopharmaceuticals were offset by growth in sales of newer drugs, it said. In the smaller diagnostics division, sales increased by 4 percent to 13.8 billion Swiss francs. This is mainly due to a strong basic business.