Aurelia Butler

DOHA (Reuters) -Pent-up demand from the pandemic means consumers are weathering high airfares, but as summer ends and inflation and interest rate rises begin to bite, there are growing questions over whether the appetite for travel is sustainable.Global airlines are now expected to post a $9.7 billion loss in 2022, a sharp improvement from a revised $42.1 billion loss in 2021, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Monday, and to possibly claw their way back to profit in 2023.But earnings remain well short of pre-pandemic levels as highly indebted carriers grapple with fresh challenges from rising fuel costs and high wages bills that they are attempting to pass on to consumers in the form of higher fares.”We have a certain degree of insensitivity to prices this year,” IATA Chief Economist Marie Owens Thomsen said, citing high household savings rates during the pandemic and pent-up travel demand. “That could fade into next year.”Industry leaders gathering at IATA’s annual meeting in Doha said bookings generally looked very strong for the next few months, but there was less certainty beyond that. “The demand is pent up. It is revenge travel,” Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Izham Ismail said. “Airfares have gone up tremendously. It is not only in Malaysia or Malaysia Airlines – it is throughout the industry globally. If the price continues to be high the demand will taper off.”IATA forecasts yields, a proxy for airfares, will rise by 5.6% this year globally.Air New Zealand Chief Executive Greg Foran said fares at his airline were now running 20% to 25% above pre-COVID levels, in part to cover fuel prices that have more than doubled.”We are communicating to our customers and letting them know … what they’re seeing in ticket prices is not Air New Zealand trying to recover money that it lost over the last 800-plus days. It’s about dealing with cost pressures that we have in front of us today,” he said.Consumers in many countries are now facing higher prices for everyday items such as groceries and gasoline that are rising faster than wages.To date, that has not hit the appetite for travel, with many having saved up during the pandemic when many borders were closed and holidays were postponed.Hawaiian Airlines Chief Executive Peter Ingram said demand from the U.S. mainland and Canada was “incredibly robust”, with capacity running around 15% above pre-pandemic levels.”It’s impossible not to be aware of the fact that we’re seeing a lot of inflation in the United States. But as we look at the demand right now, we aren’t really seeing any effects,” he said. “That’s not to say we won’t see some as the year goes on. But right now, all the demand indicators are very strong.”IATA Director General Willie Walsh also played down concerns of a so-called “demand cliff” that would spell a short-lived recovery.”I don’t think it’s a flash in the pan,” he said. “I think there is some pent-up demand being fulfilled at the moment, but you’ve got to remember we’re still well below where we were in 2019.””So I think there’s still a lot of ground to make up before we can get into the debate as to whether we’ll see that taper off.”But in India, where airlines are entering a traditionally lower travel period in July to September during monsoon season, there are rising concerns about the sustainability of demand given airfares have not fully covered the impact of rising fuel prices, Vistara Chief Executive Vinod Kannan said.”We have to cross our fingers, wish, pray and see what happens,” he said of the low season. “Fare increases can help you to a certain extent. But if your demand drops off, you’re back to square one.” More

It’s a little over three days after the World Trade Organization ministerial came to an agreement as dawn broke over Lake Geneva, and I’m sure some attendees are still catching up on sleep. There’s been a veritable banquet since of hot takes for you to choose from. Among the more thoughtful and optimistic are this thread from academic and former WTO official Nicolas Lamp and this on the fishing subsidies issue from piscine guru Alice Tipping. In today’s main piece I talk with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the institution’s director-general, who was very pugnacious indeed in declaring the ministerial a success, and muse on a couple of themes about how negotiations work and what they mean. Charted Waters looks at UK-EU trade on the sixth anniversary of the Brexit vote. Thoughts, tips, questions: [email protected] or hit reply to this email.Modest fare, but ministers will come back for moreIt’s all about expectations, obviously. If you believed a failed ministerial would kill the WTO outright — especially if you genuinely feared India and its allies might end the 24-year-old moratorium on taxing digital trade — last week was a heroic escape act. Conversely, if you really thought the WTO would clear the thicket of intellectual property (IP) protection around manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines and treatments you might regard the outcome as worse than nothing. On Friday night I talked with Okonjo-Iweala, who had quite a bit to say about those who were intellectually invested in the WTO’s failure. “People predicted total failure for this conference,” she said. “When you then deliver, the incentive is to minimise that as much as possible . . . there’s an industry of negativism against the WTO which has to stop.”Okonjo-Iweala hasn’t made herself popular with health campaigners in particular, who supported India and South Africa’s initial proposal for a complete waiver in the WTO’s “Trips” agreement on IP. “You were never going to get the 100% waiver,” she said. “It wasn’t going to happen because this is an issue where you had members on opposing sides and by the nature of the organisation, when that happens, members have to negotiate.”In some ways, to channel Zhou Enlai, it’s too early to tell the success of the summit. The decision to go for a limited outcome on fishing subsidies was portrayed as a temporary tactical retreat from a full-scale deal covering fishing overcapacity more generally. The idea is that governments can come back for another go at the next ministerial, to be held probably next year.The Trips issue also has a built-in deadline, with negotiators due to look at IP for tests and treatments as well as vaccines within six months. That’s not going to be easy: the US (which those campaigners have now twigged has been stringing them along for two years with its purported support for a waiver) will resist expanding coverage to antiviral treatments at the behest of its pharma industry. Talking of the US, the ministerial also promised to try to restore the dispute settlement process — still handicapped by the US blocking appointments to the appellate body — to full functioning order by 2024.The old-school view is that this bitty kind of approach, doing issues individually on different timelines, doesn’t work. Governments need grand bargains (the “single undertaking” principle) to trade off concessions in one area from gains in another. Unfortunately, as we saw with the late and unlamented Doha round, there are so many strands in a full negotiation that the complexity of constructing trade-offs outweighs the flexibility.The WTO leadership and negotiation chairs have more recently tried to keep subjects separated. Okonjo-Iweala told me: “Sometimes, all this leveraging and cross connections between outcomes I think in the past has led to the failure to achieve anything, because then everything just doesn’t work and collapses. I was really determined from the get-go that wasn’t going to happen and I was trying to discourage members from linking one thing to another.” Santiago Wills, the Colombian ambassador who chairs the fisheries talks, argued last week that an urgent environmental global public good issue shouldn’t get tangled up in more routine subjects of commerce.This didn’t entirely succeed. India arrived waving its threat to end the digital trade moratorium to get its way on the entirely separate issue of giving production-distorting subsidies to its farmers in the name of building buffer stocks of food (it’s an intriguing question whether Delhi would have gone ahead and killed the moratorium if other governments had tried to call its bluff). “India is very clear about what it wants . . . and will leverage outcomes to try to get what it wants,” Okonjo-Iweala told me. “Members do that. India is quite open about doing it.” The geopolitics also currently favour Delhi using that leverage. The advanced economies are keen not to drive India closer to Russia by alienating it, and both they and India itself are looking for strategic counterweights to China. Australia and the UK are in the process of agreeing fairly thin bilateral deals with India that have more to do with strategic than economic considerations.One final point. A lot of commentary naturally wraps this ministerial and indeed the general functioning of the WTO together with the future of globalisation. Certainly, a collapse last week would have given more material to the globalisation doomsters to work with. But recall that throughout the great surge of globalisation from the late 1990s to the global financial crisis in 2008, the WTO basically achieved nothing except a series of failed ministerials (Seattle 1999, Cancún 2003, Geneva 2008). In the real world, trade was taking off like a leaping salmon. At the WTO we had to watch the doomed Doha round flap around helplessly like a dying cod stranded on the deck of a subsidised fishing trawler.Trade isn’t the same as the WTO, and the WTO isn’t the same as trade. The WTO isn’t even necessarily representative of trade policy. Fresh from being awkward over every single issue and floridly denouncing the iniquities of the rich countries in Geneva, Indian trade minister Piyush Goyal on Friday immediately skipped off to Brussels to relaunch bilateral talks with the EU, declared EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis his “partner in crime” (an unlikely pair of villains to be honest) and did a photo-op with some Indian mangoes. Striking postures at the WTO doesn’t equal wanting to watch the global trading system burn. Frankly, that’s just as well.As well as this newsletter, I write a Trade Secrets column for FT.com every Wednesday. Click here to read the latest, and visit ft.com/trade-secrets to see all my columns and previous newsletters too.Charted watersThis Thursday marks six years since the UK referendum vote that sparked the country’s departure from the EU. Downing Street this week insisted that it was “too early to pass judgment”, but that has not stopped my colleagues George Parker and Chris Giles, the FT’s political and economics editor respectively, from providing a fulsome assessment today.

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The above chart tells a story. Despite sterling losing 10 per cent of its value after the referendum result was announced, there was no subsequent uplift in British exports. The country was just hit by inflation due to rising import costs.The second point to note is that trade did not initially fall off a cliff. But that did happen at the start of 2021, not because of new tariffs between the EU and the UK but because of the friction caused by the introduction of significant border controls. (Jonathan Moules)Trade linksThe head of Maersk, the world’s second-largest shipping group, says he doesn’t see global trade going into reverse.The FT editorial board opines that the WTO is on life support, but the world still needs it.Doug Irwin of Dartmouth College and the Peterson Institute argues that globalisation helped all countries get richer.Bill Reinsch of the Center for Strategic and International Studies examines the US Congress’s complaints it is being cut out of trade policy.Trade Secrets is edited by Jonathan Moules More

DOHA (Reuters) -Global airlines battered by COVID-19 seem confident of narrowing their losses and went on the offensive at an industry summit in Qatar, criticising governments and airports over their handling of the recovery from the pandemic.”The cost of government mismanagement was substantial. It devastated economies, disrupted supply chains and destroyed jobs,” Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association, told the sector’s annual meeting of more than 100 airline bosses.Airlines have themselves been under fire from governments and consumer groups for disruption as travel demand resumes more briskly than expected, but the airline industry sees a common thread in uncoordinated government responses to the crisis. “There was one virus, but each government invented its own methodology,” Walsh told the conference. “How can anybody have confidence in such a shambolic, uncoordinated, and knee-jerk response by governments?”Aside from the painful recovery, airlines executives also focused on issues such as labour shortages at airports.Recent flight delays and cancellations have been widely blamed on a lack of staff as an increasing number of people desert low-paid airport work for flexible working practices that prospered during the pandemic.The head of host airline Qatar Airways, Akbar Al Baker, said labour shortages will be a big challenge in the coming months, though he added that his airline is “inundated with job applications”.”People got into a bad habit of working from home,” Al Baker told a news conference.”They feel they don’t need go to an industry that really needs hands-on people,” he said, adding shortages in airport staff could restrict the post-crisis growth of airlines. JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ:JBLU) Corp CEO Robin Hayes, speaking about industry labour shortages on the same panel in Doha, said he is confident that we will get back to “a new normal” over the next two to three years.’NOT THE RIGHT RESPONSE’IATA’s Walsh cited research showing that border closures had barely arrested the spread of the pandemic while virtually halting international travel and crippling economies.”Closing borders is not the right response to a pandemic,” Walsh said.Governments worldwide lent more than $200 billion of support to airlines to curb bankruptcies during the pandemic, according to UK-based aviation consultancy Ishka.Airlines expected to narrow losses in 2022 and may make a profit next year as air travel recovers, IATA said. Walsh said he was “not concerned” about the current demand and supply environment.Walsh said confused government policies had worsened disruption seen particularly in Europe as flying restarted.Britain has criticised airlines for delays and called on the industry to refrain from overbooking flights they can’t operate.Airlines and airports frequently spar at the industry’s major gatherings, with government interests and jobs at stake.Walsh, who built a reputation as a bruiser in clashes with unions and governments as former head of British Airways, rallied under-pressure CEOs with an attack on the practice of hiking airport fees to recoup revenues lost during the crisis.”Try that in a competitive business. ‘Dear Valued Customer, we are charging you double for your coffee today because you could not buy one yesterday’. Who would accept that?” he said.Airports have said they are unfairly criticised by airlines and called on them to focus on resolving their own problems. More

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain plans to make “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) companies carry out affordability checks, gain approval by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and ensure adverts are fair and clear, the government said on Monday, in measures to regulate the sector.BNPL businesses, which are unregulated, typically offer interest-free short-term loans that spread payments for retail goods such as clothing and have, according to the government, rapidly increased in popularity. “Buy-now, pay-later can be a helpful way to manage your finances but we need to ensure that people can embrace new products and services with the appropriate protections in place,” said John Glen, economic secretary to the finance ministry.The government said it would publish a consultation on draft legislation towards the end of this year and would then lay secondary legislation, used to fill in the details of Acts, by mid-2023. After that, the FCA would consult on its rules for the sector, it added.Martin Lewis, founder of consumer campaign group MoneySavingExpert.com, said progress to ensure proper checks has been “painfully slow”.”Buy now, pay later is often insidiously marketed as a simple payment option … It’s not. It’s a debt,” Lewis said.The FCA in February told BNPL operators Clearpay, Klarna, Laybuy and Openpay to change their contracts after identifying potential harm to customers. It had to use Britain’s consumer rights law.BNPL companies charge online retailers a fee for each transactionLaybuy co-founder Gary Rohloff said the company has always favoured proportionate rules that reflect the low risk of BNPL and that it is supportive of the government’s approach.The BNPL business model emerged in times of very low interest rates, but the prospect of sustained increases to interest rates could spell trouble for the sector.Britain last week said that it will update its decades-old consumer credit law https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-commits-to-reform-of-the-consumer-credit-act?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications-topic&utm_source=e6a7d4d4-1a94-420e-8e2c-28a7c6e07341&utm_content=immediately to simplify rules and cut costs, with a public consultation due by the end of the year. More

PARIS (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist camp scrambled on Monday to seek support from parliamentary rivals in order to salvage some of his reform agenda and avoid political paralysis, after voters punished them in a legislative election.While Macron’s “Ensemble” grouping secured the largest number of lawmakers in the 577-seat National Assembly, it fell well short of an absolute majority in a vote on Sunday that saw a leftwing alliance and the far-right perform very strongly.There is no script in France for how things should unfold.”It’s going to be complicated,” government spokeswoman Olivia Gregoire told France Inter radio. “We’re going to have to be creative. “What I fear most is that this country be blocked,” she added.Macron himself has yet to comment on the election result. One key question is whether he will try to strike a coalition deal with the conservative Les Republicains – who have for now rejected that option – or enter into messy negotiations with opponents on a bill-by-bill basis.”We will try to bring others on board with us, especially to convince the few moderates in parliament to follow us,” Gregoire said, adding that Macron is set to reshuffle his government in the coming days.If no agreement can be found, the euro zone’s second biggest economy faces political paralysis.Parliament is fragmented, with a broad leftwing alliance and, diametrically opposed to it, the largest far-right group ever elected https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/far-right-sends-shockwaves-france-after-electoral-breakthrough-2022-06-19. If Macron cannot find enough support to make things work, France may face snap elections down the line.A first major test will be a cost-of-living bill which Gregoire said the government will put to lawmakers in eight days, when the new parliament will sit for the first time.Over the summer, proposals on renewable energy will test the solidity of Jean-Luc Melenchon’s broad leftist alliance https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-left-pulls-off-election-gamble-unity-going-forward-not-so-easy-2022-06-19, which is divided over nuclear power. Final figures showed Macron’s centrist camp got 245 seats – well below the 289 needed to control parliament, the Nupes leftwing alliance 131, the far-right 89 and Les Republicains 61.PAINFUL SETBACKThe vote was a painful setback https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/macron-faces-tough-battle-control-parliament-france-votes-2022-06-19 for Macron, 44, who was re-elected in April. In his second and final term, he wants to deepen European Union integration, raise the retirement age and inject new life into France’s nuclear industry.Macron’s Ensemble alliance and Les Republicains have compatible platforms on economic matters, including pushing up the retirement age and promoting nuclear energy. Together, they would have an absolute majority. But lawmakers from Les Republicans indicated they were not willing to jump on board just yet. “Forget about this idea that there is some sort of imperative to choose between Emmanuel Macron and the extremists,” Republicans secretary general Aurelien Pradie told franceinfo radio.”The Republicans’ position in parliament will be free and independent.”UNDER PRESSUREFinancial markets took the result largely in their stride, with little impact on the euro and stocks in early trading on Monday. French bond spreads saw some widening pressure.”The hope that some foreign exchange traders placed in Macron in 2017 evaporated some time back, so that election victories or defeats do not play a major role for the euro exchange rates any longer,” Commerzbank (ETR:CBKG) analyst Ulrich Leuchtmann said in a note.Macron’s victory in April made him the first French president in two decades to win a second term, as voters rallied to keep his far-right opponent Marine Le Pen out of power.But, after a first presidential mandate marked by a top-down government style that Macron himself compared to that of Jupiter https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/jupiter-no-more-macron-learns-art-compromising-hard-way-2022-06-19, the almighty Roman god, the president will now have to learn the art of consensus-building. “Such a fragmented parliament will likely result in political deadlock, with a much slower reform agenda, possibly leading to vote of no confidence and/or a dissolution of the National Assembly over the coming year,” said Philippe Gudin of Barclays (LON:BARC).”This will likely weaken France’s position in Europe and endanger the country’s fiscal position, which is already weak.” More

Conventional economic theory holds that ageing is disinflationary. Older people and households typically consume less than younger ones, and they often downsize their homes to account for being empty nesters. Therefore, economic models typically factor in an increasing share of old and/or non-working people as being net negative for demand and thus disinflationary, as this long-term IMF study shows.But we may be at an important pivot point in this theory, at least in some rich countries such as the US. Boomers are living much longer, and are increasingly unwilling to downsize. The coronavirus pandemic made those who are still working (and there are many, since today’s older people are healthier and also want to bolster their retirement savings with income) more likely to hang on to their large homes rather than make do in a one-floor apartment. They can certainly afford it, since they still control more than half the country’s wealth, and show little sign of wanting to pass it along to the next generation.What’s more, they are spending more not only on healthcare, but also on other services. Research from the National Transfer Accounts project, which tracks consumption patterns across 40 countries, found that consumption not only doesn’t fall with age in places such as the US, Germany, France and Japan, but also that the young and old typically consume more than they earn as workers, which is inflationary.Some of this involves debt spending and the wealth effect of higher asset prices over the past several decades. We may be leaving that era, perhaps for a long time, what with the Federal Reserve’s interest rate rises driving markets lower. But I still know plenty of older people who are living much larger than their millennial kids (who came of age in the post-financial crises era, and have paid for it with reduced salaries and expectations).Indeed, there are venture capitalists, like the famous Alan Patricof, who are doubling down on older people who are part of a “silver tsunami” of consumers who will continue to spend in good markets and bad. Patricof, who is in his late eighties, is pouring millions into a venture fund that’s investing in health, wellness and financial services for older people.I can see it both ways. I’m 52, but my husband, a writer, is 68. Having chosen creative ventures over a big salary, he’s ready to scale back as his income declines. I myself haven’t been able to put as much away for retirement as my Fidelity advisers say I should have, in part because I’ve had to save nearly $500,000 to send two children to college debt-free (how’s that for consumption?). I’ll be working forever, and spending less after the youngest leaves for college. My husband’s brother, on the other hand, is a retired corporate compensation lawyer who takes several fancy overseas trips a year, has three properties that need maintenance, and seems to have no shortage of energy or money for consumption.I suspect that like most Americans, older people will be quite bifurcated in their consumption habits, with a top tier who will continue to spend like there’s no tomorrow even as inflation bites, and a lower 75 per cent who will, like my own parents in the inflationary 1970s, be penny-pinching. But the bigger problem is that as the proportion of the population able to work starts to shrink relative to those who are no longer productive, as will be the case as the boomers continue to retire, there will be more people competing to consume fewer goods and services. That means prices are likely to rise — as will political battles between boomers and millennials, both of who will want their share of a decreasing national economic pie.Ed, as a Briton living in America long term, I’m curious how you view consumption and production as you move towards your later years (don’t get me wrong, you are nowhere close!)? Will you keep working and spending like an American, or retire to a cottage somewhere in the UK for a more modest life?Recommended readingI was quite fascinated by my colleague Courtney Weaver’s FT Magazine feature on “gentle parenting”, of the kind that involves no punishments, or star charts or much discipline. No prizes for guessing that I didn’t fall into this camp, and am sympathetic to my friend Judith Warner’s take, in her book Perfect Madness, that American parents — whether gentle or firm — are trying way too hard to be perfect.I really enjoyed this Elizabeth Kolbert piece in The New Yorker on how animals see the world, which picks up on The Atlantic writer Ed Yong’s new book on the same topic. If you are into this stuff, as I am, go for broke and watch My Octopus Teacher, which will make you weep.This round-up of non-fiction in The New York Review of Books looking at pain research and the search to understand where pain really comes from (the brain? the body? our imagination?) will be of interest to many, I suspect.I joined the Ezra Klein Show this week to discuss what I’ve called the everything bubble — and why I think it’s popping. You can listen to the episode here. Edward Luce respondsRana, let me start by ruling out a cottage in the English countryside, not least because my Irish wife might find it a little too Anglican for her tastes. I have little sense of where we will end up or whether we’ll be able to afford it. But it will have to be a big city, so London is a high likelihood. Much as I enjoy living in Washington DC, I don’t want to be one of those types who spend their autumn years attending think-tank seminars about central Asian gas pipelines. I have two broad assumptions. The first is that I’m only halfway through my useful career. Though I’m 54, I would expect to be writing and travelling and contributing into my 80s and have no fear of that. As writers, we don’t mop floors or deliver packages, so the prospect of continuing to work would be a lifestyle choice, not drudgery. This is a fascinating world and I hope I will always have the good fortune to be able to engage with it. Second, we were just too young to have benefited from the exorbitant privilege of high fixed pensions, so we are hostages of asset prices that can go down as well as up (though our generation has until recently only seen them going up). I don’t have massive savings because I’m a happy-go-lucky journalist and not a huge fan of deferred consumption. But I’m beginning to grow up. I only recently found out that the FT’s matching contributions are quite generous if you go for the maximum, which I’ve belatedly done. So I have only myself to blame for the years of free money that I did not bother to exploit. But there are many more to go and my eyes start to glaze over whenever I listen to actuaries. For sure, I plan too little and may pay a price for that when I’m old. But some people plan too much and I don’t envy them. Your feedback And now a word from our Swampians . . . In response to ‘Do no harm’:“ESG and social justice are nice and lovely, but the reality you hint at is that politically activist corporations become a bad and frightening idea when they make threats aimed at directly dictating political decisions and government policies through their economic power. And increasingly they will dictate the political agenda if we continue too far down the road we’re travelling now in the name of purpose and ESG. This is a real threat, and liberals are potentially walking into a big trap here . . . [W]ith the best intentions we’re trashing the idea of electoral democracy in favour of the amoral instrumentalism of ‘my side can do whatever it wants to get the results it wants because it’s right’. And that’s dangerous. Abstract and boring rules about political process are actually important in protecting us from the vagaries of fashion, from moral panics, and from the personal whims of the powerful.” — A reader in the UK More

Investing.com — The dollar stays bid after a Federal Reserve official argues for another 75 basis point hike in July. Germany restarts its coal-fired power stations and will introduce an auction scheme to reduce its gas consumption after Gazprom cut supplies by 60% last week. Emmanuel Macron loses his parliamentary majority in France, while China passes up an opportunity to loosen monetary policy. Bitcoin bounces after dipping below $18,000 at the weekend, but oil’s sell-off continues as fears of a recession meet a slight improvement in the supply outlook. Here’s what you need to know in financial markets on Monday, June 20.1. Dollar stays bid as Waller argues for another 75bp hikeThe dollar stayed close to the 19-year high it posted last week after a Federal Reserve official said he wants another 75 basis point rate hike at its meeting in July.“If the data comes in as I expect, I will support a similar-sized move at our July meeting,” Washington, D.C.-based governor Christopher Waller said on Sunday. However, Waller – a noted hawk – also appeared to take a full percentage point hike off the table, saying there were limits to how fast the Fed can move.Elsewhere, Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester told CBS it would take two years to bring inflation down to the Fed’s 2% target, and acknowledged that the Fed’s delayed response to the threat had raised the risk of a U.S. recession.2. Germany restarts its coal-fired power stations after gas supplies cutGermany said it will restart some coal-fired power stations in order to guarantee the security of energy supplies, after Russia cut gas flows to its biggest customer by 60% last week.The move threatens to delay Germany’s slow progress toward phasing out coal, which was agreed upon as part of the current government’s coalition agreement. However, it improves the chances of the country filling its gas storage facilities by the start of winter. Gazprom’s (MCX:GAZP) supply cuts had put an abrupt stop to what had been a steady rise in storage injections in recent weeks.Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck also said he will introduce an auction system aimed at reducing gas consumption from this summer, but gave few indications as to how it would work.Benchmark European gas prices hit a new three-month high in response.3. Global stocks drift higher as China’s central bank resists temptation to cut; Lagarde testimony eyedWith U.S. markets closed for the Juneteenth holiday, Asian and European markets have drifted mostly higher.China’s central bank overnight declined an opportunity to cut its Prime Loan Rate, the most important of its policy interest rates, signaling that it’s still more concerned about overall levels of leverage in the economy than about the slowdown in consumption due to the spate of COVID-19 lockdowns.European markets, meanwhile, shrugged off the news that French President Emmanuel Macron had lost his parliamentary majority in elections to the Assemblee Nationale at the weekend, with the extreme left and right both making gains at the expense of his centrist faction. French bonds underperformed in a quiet morning session for Eurozone debt.The European Central Bank’s President Christine Lagarde will address the EU Parliament at 09:00 a.m. ET (1300 GMT).4. Bitcoin bounces but DeFi networks still strugglingBitcoin bounced, snapping a five-day losing streak after slumping briefly below $20,000 at the weekend.By 06:30 a.m. ET, the largest asset in the crypto space was trading at $20,502, up 3.0% from late Sunday. However, it had dipped below $18,000 on Saturday, falling for the first time below the peak of its previous cycle in 2018.Pressure on less liquid crypto networks continued to create problems however. Celsius Network, one of a handful of lenders to suspend withdrawals last week, said it would need more time to resume them, while DeFi platform Bancor suspended its so-called ‘Impermanent Loss Protection’ mechanism less than a month after launching it.Solend, a network that runs on the Solana blockchain, said it had taken over an outsize position run by a single participant to reduce its systemic risk.5. Oil selling slows Crude oil prices extended their declines, although the pace of selling slowed a Friday rout that was driven by recession fears.By 06:30 a.m. ET, U.S. crude futures were down 0.4% at $107.53 a barrel, while Brent was down 0.8% at $112.20 a barrel.Newswires reported that Libya had managed to restore its output to 800,000 barrels a day as a wave of protests and disruptions to export facilities subsided. The outlook for rising U.S. supply also continues to improve, with Baker Hughes’ rig count having risen by another 4 to a 26-month high of 584 last week. More

The higher dividend, to be voted on at an annual meeting on June 28, would amount to 25.8 billion crowns ($1.1 billion) rather than the 23.7 billion crowns proposed by the board. The state owns 70% of CEZ.The proposal would also move the payment date by three months to Nov. 1 from Aug. 1 to give CEZ extra time to secure liquidity given high margin requirements on power exchanges in a volatile market, the ministry said.($1 = 23.4760 Czech crowns) More