Frankfurt's Banks Brace for a Year of Thin Margins
Falling rates were supposed to lift lending. Instead they have squeezed the spread that German lenders depend on, and the cost-cutting has begun.
Business
14 articles
The North Sea Has Plenty of Wind. What It Lacks Is Cable.
Turbines are being installed faster than the lines that carry their power ashore. A shortage of high-voltage cable, and the ships that lay it, is now the bottleneck.
Traffic Through the Suez Canal Is Recovering. The Shipping Lines Are Not Rushing Back.
Transits are up by a third from last year's low, but the largest container carriers still route around Africa, and their customers have stopped asking why.
Cocoa Prices Tumble From Record Highs, but Chocolate Lovers Won’t See Cheaper Bars Soon
A recovering West African harvest has cut cocoa futures by more than half from their 2024 peak, yet manufacturers say shrunken bars and higher prices are here to stay.
After Two Years of Free Fall, Used Electric Car Prices in Europe Have Stopped Dropping
Three-year-old E.V.s now hold about 48 percent of their original value, up from a low of 41 percent, as cheaper batteries, longer warranties and tighter supply steady the market.
Rotterdam Bets Its Future on a Fuel That Does Not Yet Arrive
Europe's largest port has built the terminals and pipelines for imported hydrogen. The ships are still mostly hypothetical.
Europe's Lithium Problem Is Not Geology. It Is Paperwork.
The continent has enough lithium in the ground to supply its battery plants. Getting permission to dig it up takes, on average, eleven years.
The Hydrogen Airliner Was Promised for 2035. The Date Is Slipping.
Europe's planemaker has quietly moved its zero-emission aircraft to the next decade. Engineers say the problem is not the engine but the tank.
Swiss Watch Exports Fall for a Sixth Straight Month as American Buyers Balk at Tariff Prices
Shipments to the United States, the industry’s largest market, dropped 23 percent in September, and smaller brands in the Jura are cutting hours.
Germany’s Machine Tool Makers, Long the World’s Benchmark, Confront a Chinese Challenge They Didn’t See Coming
Orders from abroad fell 14 percent this year as Chinese rivals moved upmarket, and the industry’s trade group warns of 20,000 job losses by 2028.
European Pension Funds Begin Pulling Back From Private Credit After a Decade of Rushing In
Dutch and Nordic funds have trimmed allocations as defaults rise and returns converge with cheaper public bonds, a shift that could squeeze a $1.9 trillion industry.
Container Shipping Rates Sink as a Record Wave of New Vessels Hits the Water
Freight costs from Asia to Europe have fallen by half since January, and carriers that ordered ships during the pandemic boom are now scrapping, idling and slow-steaming to cope.
London Landlords Turn Empty Offices Into Apartments as Vacancies Hit a 30-Year High
Planning applications to convert commercial buildings to housing have tripled since 2023, but the economics work only for the oldest towers in the least fashionable districts.
The Data Centers Are Coming for the Grid
Applications to connect new computing facilities now exceed the spare capacity of several national grids. Utilities are starting to say no.
