Germany posted its first rise in unemployment in almost three years on Wednesday, a day after the global economic downturn forced U.S. aluminium giant Alcoa to announce 15,000 job cuts and slash output.
UK retailer Marks & Spencer added to the gloom in Europe with its worst quarterly sales figures in a decade, while Russia's dispute with Ukraine over natural gas threatened shortages for homes and factories in eastern Europe.
"We expect challenging economic conditions to continue for at least the next 12 months," said M&S Chairman Stuart Rose, after the 125-year-old clothing, food and homewares group posted a 7.1 percent slide in UK quarterly sales and announced over a thousand job cuts.
The Labour Office in Germany said unemployment in December rose by a seasonally adjusted 18,000, the first rise since February 2006, which will give extra impetus to a new stimulus package for Europe's largest economy, which is likely to be finalised next week and could total 50 billion euros ($67 billion).
"How steep the rise in unemployment will be hinges largely on what the government agrees to do in its second stimulus package," said Joerg Lueschow, economist at WestLB.
COMPANIES UNDER PRESSURE
The German data added to bad news from Tuesday that included bankruptcy protection filings by the U.S. units of LyondellBasell, the world's third-largest petrochemical company, and helped cool a New Year's shares rally in Europe, where Swiss bank UBS is a major creditor of the company.
"The bankruptcy filing in the U.S. by LyondellBasell is not a good sign. It could be the first of a long series of defaults and Chapter 11 filings by industrial groups. These companies are still under pressure on two fronts: profitability and refinancing, and that's not about to change," said Sebastien Barthelemi, analyst at Louis Capital Markets in Paris.
Germany's ruling coalition is discussing support measures worth up to 100 billion euros for firms in financial trouble, the Financial Times Deutschland daily reported.
And Tokyo's Mainichi newspaper said the government may inject money into 40 or more regional banks, though an official at Japan's Financial Services Agency said no broad injection of public funds was under consideration.
Even so, Japanese shares ended 1.7 percent higher, and MSCI's all-country world stock index, a benchmark for many investors, was up 0.62 percent as of 1058 GMT, but in Europe the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top shares was down 0.65 percent.
Alcoa's job cuts and its plan to slash aluminium output by 18 percent came ahead of U.S. employment numbers due on Friday which are expected to show the economy shed half a million jobs in December alone, taking total 2008 job losses to more than 2.4 million.
IN Asia, both Indonesia and Taiwan announced interest rate cuts on Wednesday, while Thai ministers are due to discuss a stimulus package flagged at $8.6 billion.
Taiwan's emergency rate cut followed a 42 percent plunge in December exports.
