Author: Steven Sahiounie

Uniper seeks billions in compensation for halted energy supplies. Germany’s largest gas importer Uniper said on Wednesday it is seeking billions of euros in compensation from Russia’s Gazprom for undelivered natural gas, and has opened an arbitration process. According to the soon-to-be-nationalized company, replacing Russian supplies has cost it around €11.6 billion ($12.02 billion) so far, with the figure expected to grow until the end of 2024. “We are claiming recovery of our significant financial damages in these proceedings. It’s about gas volumes that were contractually agreed with Gazprom but not delivered and for which we had to procure replacements…

Moscow is still by far the region’s biggest supplier despite a looming embargo. Western Europe continues to lean heavily on Russia as a source of diesel, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, noting that the region needs to find new supplies with fewer than ten weeks to go until sanctions all but block the imports. According to the media outlet, citing Vortexa data, the European Union and the United Kingdom received almost half their waterborne imports of diesel-type fuel from Russia in the first 24 days of this month. The level of reliance reportedly soared from October, in line with the region’s…

Unemployment claims in the EU’s economic powerhouse topped 2.5 million in November, labor agency says. The number of unemployed in Germany jumped by 17,000 in November in monthly terms, to 2,540,000, according to the country’s Federal Labor Agency. Statistics issued on Wednesday show the nation’s unemployment rate rose to 5.6% last month from 5.5% in October. Analysts had not expected the figure to change from the previous month. “Overall, the labor market is stable,” Daniel Terzenbach, who’s in charge of regions at the Federal Labor Agency, said in a statement. “Seasonally adjusted unemployment and underemployment have risen once more and short-time work…

The bloc wants a compromise to allow Moscow sell its crude for $60 a barrel. Lawmakers in the European Union are negotiating a lower price cap for Russian seaborne oil exports at $60 per barrel, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg on Wednesday. The EU has been deadlocked on the issue since last week as Poland, Estonia and Lithuania insist that the proposed cap of $65-$70 is “too generous” to Moscow, and should instead be set at $30. Meanwhile, major shipping countries, including Greece, Malta and Cyprus, have angled for the ceiling to be set at around $70 per barrel. The…

November consumer prices in the EU’s second-largest economy jumped 7.1% from a year ago, official statistics show. The French economy continued to be hampered by record inflation in November, defying economists’ expectations, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Research (Insee) reported on Wednesday. According to its preliminary estimates, consumer prices surged 7.1% from a year earlier, matching October’s increase. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted a 7% rise. The report suggested that the price of food (excluding fresh produce) and manufactured goods, as well as services, accelerated in November. The price of services rose 3% on the year, which…

Brussels still hopes to use the frozen funds to finance Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reports. EU officials have said they cannot legally confiscate Russian assets that have been frozen under Western sanctions. The bloc however hopes to set up an international court to prosecute Russian officials for the military operation in Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. According to European Commission officials, the international principle of state immunity doesn’t allow the executive body to appropriate the assets of the Russian Central Bank, but lawmakers have proposed that EU member states and their allies create a fund to manage the…

Sam Bankman-Fried claims he didn’t steal customer funds while at the helm of his now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange. Former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried denied on Wednesday committing fraud at his collapsed crypto exchange, with billions in funds missing, and said he’d had a “bad month.” In his first major public appearance since the November 11 implosion of FTX and sister trading house Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried said he “screwed up” at the helm of the exchange and should have focused more on risk management, customer protection and the links between FTX and Alameda. “I made a lot of mistakes,” the 30-year-old stated, in a video…

The country’s GDP saw 6.3% growth in the July-September quarter, official data shows. India’s gross domestic product (GDP) for the July-September quarter of the current financial year was up 6.3% year-on-year, according to provisional estimates released by its National Statistical Office (NSO) on Wednesday. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its report earlier this month projected a growth rate of between 6.1% and 6.3% for the same period. The new data shows that, while GDP had expanded by 8.4% in the corresponding quarter during 2021-22, it had registered a growth of 13.5% in the preceding quarter, April-June of 2022-23.…

Finland’s GDP decreased by 0.3% in July through September from the previous quarter, official data shows. Finland’s economy has continued to decline, contracting more in the third quarter than a previous estimate indicated, official statistics revealed on Wednesday. Statistics Finland data showed that GDP shrank 0.3% last quarter from the previous three-month period, ending five consecutive quarters of growth. In the year, the economy grew 1.0%, adjusted for the number of working days. “The consumption of goods like food and fuel has declined since mid-2021, but now households are clearly reducing consumption on semi-durable goods such as clothes and shoes,” said…

The sanctioned $8 billion is only a fraction of the money held by Russians in the country, the economy ministry says. The Swiss economy ministry announced on Thursday that it had frozen $7.94 billion (7.5 billion Swiss francs) worth of Russian assets as of November 25, 2022. This is apart from 15 properties belonging to Russia’s sanctioned legal entities and individuals. The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) has also revealed data on the amount of deposits declared by Russians. “The sanctioned amount is only a fraction of all Russian assets in Switzerland,” Erwin Bollinger, SECO’s head of bilateral economic relations, told Bloomberg.…